Data subjects rights

Right of information

Any person shall have the right to request information in writing (and a copy of the national decision giving rise to the alert that has been issued in the system) about whether and which personal data relating to them have been entered into SIS II, for what reason and which authority issued the alert (see Article 42 of Regulation 1987/2006).

In the event a person is the subject of an alert in SIS and/or EKANA (national list of undesirable aliens) this person shall also have:

Right of access, correction and/or deletion (Articles 41 of Regulation (EC) No 1987/2006 and 58 of Decision No 2007/533/JHA)

In particular, any person shall have the right to know which information relating to them is entered in SIS II and shall also have the right to have their data corrected or deleted if they are inaccurate or they have unlawfully been stored in the system. Therefore, data subjects have the right to obtain the correction of their factually inaccurate data corrected and the deletion of their data which have been unlawfully processed. These rights are always exercised under the national law of the country in which they are applied and, hence, relevant procedures in different member states may vary.

In Greece, the above rights relating to an alert issued in SIS and EKANA are directly exercised before the controller, namely the Ministry of Citizen Protection, which must respond to the request for access to personal data not later than sixty (60) days.

The contact details of the Ministry in question are as follows:

Remedies and right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority 

Any person may bring an action before the competent courts or other authorities competent under the law of any Member State to correct, delete or obtain information or to obtain compensation in connection with an alert relating to him (see Article 43 of Regulation (EC) 1987/2006 and Article 59 of Decision 2007/533/CE).

In Greece, in particular, in addition to court proceedings, when it comes to both exercising the right of access/right of correction and deletion, where the controller (namely, the Ministry of Citizen Protection) does not respond in writing within 60 days, as well as in case the data subject is not satisfied with the response received, he/she may bring an action before the Authority in order to check the lawfulness of the alert. The contact details of the Authority are as follows:

Any information relating to data which belong to a person who is the subject of an alert in SIS and EKANA is provided only tο the person itself −the data subject− or to a person authorised by the data subject in question. As for the request for exercising the above rights, this is submitted in writing and must include identifiers of the data subject (name, father’s name, date and place of birth, nationality and home address).

It should be noted that data subject rights are exercised free of charge.

Finally, it should be stressed that the HDPA is only competent for monitoring the lawfulness of alerts issued by the Greek police authorities.