On 1 June 2010 Ukrainian Parliament has finally adopted the Law On Personal Data Protection (the "Law").  The Law will become effective from the 1st of January 2011.

The Law offers protection of personal data collected, accumulated, processed and used for other than private and/or certain professional needs.

The Law expressly exempts from its ambit the instances of the creation of the personal data databases and processing of the personal data in such databases by (i) individuals for their personal or household needs; (ii) journalists in connection with their professional activities; and (iii) professional artists, writers and similar persons for purposes of their creative activity.

The Law introduces a definition of personal data as any data or combination thereof on the identified or identifiable individual.

Any personal data (except for the depersonalized one) is deemed to be the information with restricted access and may not be processed without the consent of the individual concerned except for the cases (i) when it is explicitly provided for by law, and (ii) where the data is necessary for the purposes of maintaining national security, economic welfare and for the protection of human rights.

Furthermore, any personal data on the individual who is willing to occupy any public office within the system of the national government is not deemed the information with restricted access.

In addition, the Law prohibits disseminating personal data for any purpose other than for purpose of the original collection of such data.

Significantly, it is explicitly prohibited to process personal data related to the racial or ethnic origin, political, religious or philosophical beliefs, political-party or trade-union membership, as well as processing of data concerning health or sex life, unless carried out pursuant to the unambiguous consent of the data subject or in other cases explicitly provided for by the Law.

The Law further sets out mandatory requirement to register any personal data database in the State Register of the Personal Data Databases. For that reason, a separate state authority is yet to be created by the government.

Law: Law of Ukraine on Personal Data Protection, dated 1 June 2010, No. 2297-VI.

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The original publication date for this article was 13/07/2010.