What’s the difference between an EU Data Representative and a Data Protection Officer?
The role of the EU representative is really a very distinct role which is to provide the presence in the EU for the non-EU business and it’s a point of contact in the EU for the non-EU business, which allows data subjects or supervisory authorities, to be able to make contact locally with a representative of the business that’s based outside of the EU. As a result of that, the representative is kind of external to the business who is the data controller or processor. The Data Protection Officer is responsible for ensuring compliance with the GDPR on behalf of the data processor or controller so the Data Protection Officer is a much broader and more comprehensive role that involves ensuring that the overall compliance of the business is in compliance with the GDPR, whereas the representative is a much narrower function and relates solely to providing a point of contact in the EU for the business, and somebody that can connect the EU with data subjects and supervisory authorities with the business.