In their vote yesterday on the future EU Data Protection Supervisor, the Committee of the European Parliament on Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) produced a very surprising result. Out of 8 possible candidates, a majority of the MEPs voted for the only candidate who has no record of dealing with privacy, data protection or even the protection of any other civil rights.

Joaquín Bayo Delgado has become known to regular readers of the Official Bulletin of the State of Spain as the dean of the university of Barcelona, and that's about it. His election - at the expense of likely candidates as Netherlands Data Protection Commissioner Peter Hustinx or Commission Data Protection tsar Ulf Brühann - seems to be the result of a behind-the-scenes deal between the forepersons of the Social Democrat and the Conservative Groups in the LIBE Committee, Anna Terrón i Cusí and Jorge Salvador Hernandez-Mollar, both of whom happen to be Spanish.

The vote was quite a complicated procedure, in which the political groups had a certain number of points, according to their size, that they could place on the different candidates. The candidates and their results were as follows:

1. Joaquin Bayo Delgado (Spain), Magistrado-Juez Decano, Barcelona (56 points) 2. Waltraut Kotschy (Austria), Datenschutzbeauftragte des Europarats, Mitglied der österr. Datenschutzkommission, Vienna (51 points) 3. Peter Johan Hustinx (Netherlands), College bescherming persoonsgegevens (CBP), The Hague (50 points) 4. Ulrich Dammann (Germany), 2. stellv. Bundesbeauftragter für den Datenschutz, BMInneres, Berlin (48 points) 5. Anne Carblanc (France), OECD, Paris (41 points) 6. Ian John Harden, Head of Legal Dept., Office of European Ombudsman, Brussels (24 points) 7. Ulf Brühann (Germany), European Commission DG Market, Brussels (23 points) 8. Maurice Méda (France), Maitre des requetes au Conseil d'État, Paris (9 points) 9. Francis George Aldhouse (UK), Deputy Information Commissioner, London (9 points)

Brühann, who was regarded, along with Hustinx, as one of the 'natural candidates', was voted by the Green and GUE (Left) Groups only, while Hustinx was the candidate of the Liberal Democrat Group.

The vote is not a final decision, though. The list of the eight candidates was the result of an obscure selection among the more than 300 applicants for the position among Council and EP delegates. And the charades will continue. After last Tuesday's vote, which, in EP slang, was only an 'orientation vote', a delegation of the LIBE Committee will meet on May 27 with the Permanent Representative of the Greek Presidency at the Council to see whether the candidates who have found a majority in the Committee are to the liking of the Council. If that is the case, they will vote once more on June 2, and this time the vote will result in two definitive candidates (the Assistant Supervisor will be voted, also). If everything works well, the Conference of Presidents of the political groups in the EP - and not the EP Plenary - will confirm the LIBE committee's vote.

European Data Protection Supervisor
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/privacy/application_en.htm

(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, consultant on EU privacy issues)