What data can be obtained when creating an air quality plan?

The President of the Personal Data Protection Office requests that the Environmental Protection Act be amended in order to eliminate doubts regarding the scope of personal data being processed.

Representatives of local government units have doubts about the scope of personal data in the resolution on the air quality plan adopted by the Mazovian Regional Assembly in 2020. The resolution does not specify the scope of personal data that may be obtained as part of the implementation of the programme. Therefore, there are doubts about what and how can be collected and what personal data can be processed. Unofficially, the local governments of Mazovia use the guidelines from the Małopolska Voivodeship. They concern support for the energy poor, i.e. those who pay huge heating bills, and still live in the cold due to the condition of the building. According to the Małopolska Voivodeship guidelines, the scope and level of support is assessed on the basis of "data remaining in the commune's resources", as well as "community interviews concerning these people", including "social assistance data" and "other resources". This is very unclear and does not ensure that the action in question actually has a legal basis.

The problem with the resolutions, however, is that the Environmental Protection Act itself does not contain precise authorisations to process data or the purpose of their processing, which may result in arbitrariness in obtaining and processing personal data. This must be regulated in a statute, and not in an act of local law, which is a source of lower-ranking law," indicates the President of the Data Protection Office in a letter to the Ministry of Climate and Environment. According to the President of the Personal Data Protection Office, Mirosław Wróblewski, the act should be clarified in this respect.