🇦🇹Data Protection Act (Datenschutzgesetz)

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Data Protection Act (Datenschutzgesetz)

Austria applies this national law alongside the GDPR. The summary below concentrates on the national overlay so that the GDPR baseline is not duplicated.

How the national law fits with GDPR

The DSG supplements the GDPR, preserves a constitutional right to data protection, regulates national special situations and provides Austrian complaint, enforcement and law-enforcement-processing rules.

National additions and variations

• Section 1 establishes a constitutional right to secrecy of personal data and requires public-authority interferences to have a necessary statutory basis and use the least intrusive effective means.
• Sections 5 and 6 impose confidentiality duties on DPOs and a data-secrecy duty on controllers, processors and staff, including instruction, contractual commitment and post-employment secrecy requirements.
• Section 7 supplies detailed conditions for public-interest archiving, scientific or historical research and statistics, including authority approval in specified cases and prompt encryption or removal of identifiers.
• Sections 12 and 13 contain national rules for private-purpose image recording, including lawful triggers, proportionality, marking and storage controls.
• Section 24 sets a one-year knowledge-based and three-year long-stop period for complaints to the authority; section 30 excludes public authorities and public-law bodies from administrative fines.

Operational approach

First maintain the GDPR control set. Then document whether this country is in scope and apply the national controls to the affected people, systems and processing. Keep article-level evidence for child consent, employment, special-category or criminal data, research, electronic communications, identifiers, surveillance and any rights restriction relied upon.