ABSTRACT
Belgian legislation and regulation concerning data protection is mostly based on international and European texts. The Law of 11 December 1998 implementing the Directive thoroughly modified the existing legislation on data protection. There have been some provisions made for the processing of national identification numbers in the Law on the Regulation of the National Register of Natural Persons of 8 August 1983. The Commission for the Protection of Privacy shall keep a register of all automatic processing operations of personal data. An independent Commission shall be established at the Ministry of Justice, called 'Commission for the Protection of Privacy', that shall be composed of members, including the Chairman, to be appointed in turn by the House of Representatives and the Senate. Medical research or the use of medical data more generally is not treated as a special sector with its own Supervisory Authority.
