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EU regulatory register · GDPR

Article 37Designation of the data protection officer

CELEX 32016R0679 · Read on 2026-08-18 · Chapter IV

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Short answer

1. The controller and the processor shall designate a data protection officer in any case where:

Verbatim from the article. Source: NovaCopilot · https://legal.exploreworldai.com/eu/rattsakter/gdpr-2016-679/artikel-37 · Short answer as data · Official text

Official text

Read from the EU Publications Office for this CELEX number. The wording stands as published; nothing here is rewritten or summarised.

1. The controller and the processor shall designate a data protection officer in any case where:

(a)

the processing is carried out by a public authority or body, except for courts acting in their judicial capacity;

(b)

the core activities of the controller or the processor consist of processing operations which, by virtue of their nature, their scope and/or their purposes, require regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale; or

(c)

the core activities of the controller or the processor consist of processing on a large scale of special categories of data pursuant to Article 9 and personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences referred to in Article 10.

2. A group of undertakings may appoint a single data protection officer provided that a data protection officer is easily accessible from each establishment.

3. Where the controller or the processor is a public authority or body, a single data protection officer may be designated for several such authorities or bodies, taking account of their organisational structure and size.

4. In cases other than those referred to in paragraph 1, the controller or processor or associations and other bodies representing categories of controllers or processors may or, where required by Union or Member State law shall, designate a data protection officer. The data protection officer may act for such associations and other bodies representing controllers or processors.

5. The data protection officer shall be designated on the basis of professional qualities and, in particular, expert knowledge of data protection law and practices and the ability to fulfil the tasks referred to in Article 39.

6. The data protection officer may be a staff member of the controller or processor, or fulfil the tasks on the basis of a service contract.

7. The controller or the processor shall publish the contact details of the data protection officer and communicate them to the supervisory authority.

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Knowledge card

Applies
controller: Designate a data protection officer where the core activities are public authority processing, large-scale regular and systematic monitoring, or large-scale special category or criminal data, and publish the contact details.
Risk if ignored
high
What to do
Designate a data protection officer where the core activities are public authority processing, large-scale regular and systematic monitoring, or large-scale special category or criminal data, and publish the contact details.
Deadline
No fixed deadline in the register

card:eu:article:gdpr--art-37 · sha256 8f8927207442 · Source: NovaCopilot

Risk, sanction and outcome

  • Art. 37 · controller

    Risk: high · Sanction: administrative_fine, högst EUR 10 000 000 · Authority: Competent supervisory authority

    Decisions applying the provision: none in the register

    Full chain (JSON)

Outcomes are counted from stored judgments that cite the provision verbatim. Source: NovaCopilot

Judgments applying this article

2 judgments in the register cite the article in their text. EU 2

Source: NovaCopilot

The text is quoted from the official source and is not legal advice. A national court reads the language version that binds in its jurisdiction.

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