Data Protection expert from BPE Solicitors joins the Council of Europe Data Protection Unit

Published by

Peter Davison

The technology partner expert on data protection and privacy rights at Cheltenham-based BPE Solicitors has been appointed to the Council of Europe Data Protection Unit, a committee dedicated to understanding data protection rules and protecting individuals’ data.

As a member of the panel for the Council, Rocio de la Cruz will work alongside a panel of experts whose job it is to identify and analyse the emerging threats to individuals’ personal data, as well as the effective implementation of Convention 108 (the international treaty that protects personal data), its principles and its values.

Rocio joined BPE in September 2021 and brought with her an extensive knowledge of both the European data protection rules and the UK general data protection rules, and information law.

She has global experience in advising on data protection and privacy law matters of every nature in different jurisdictions and is currently leading a number of complex global data protection projects in this field.

On the opportunity to cooperate with the council, Rocio said “I am honoured to be appointed to this position and I look forward to working with my fellow experts in making a contribution to the protection of privacy rights, data protection frameworks and democratic principles in a technology world that is evolving so fast.

“I have a deep admiration for the Council of Europe, the actions and guidelines of which are (for example, in the field of AI) a model to be inspired by even for non-Member countries.

"I have no hesitation that the work developed by the Data Protection Unit will be crucial to set the standards of the modernisation and harmonisation of rules aimed to protect these essential rights.

"Being part of this journey will also provide me with broader visibility and knowledge that will favour to anticipate potential changes and help organisations to achieve an acceptable and modernised level of compliance under more comfortable reaction timescales."

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.