In the face of the influx of the companies that offer data protection services FREE or at ZERO COST, we are forced to raise the alarm about the illegality of such practices. Basically, they take advantage of the bonus system for companies that offer professional training for their employees.
The following of the Data Protection Law is a very serious matter and we consider it a fundamental right of every citizen. Improper practices are harmful, even irreparable. They discredit the letter of the law by making it difficult for organizations to comply due to inadequate adaptation to the norms.
We are talking about misleading practices that put the employees rights at risk, by channeling funds meant for their professional training into something else, meaning that consultancy services are camouflaged as teaching professional training courses. This is a fraudulent practice, called incorrectly as “free”, as the funds for the professional training of employees is paid by all the citizens in the form of taxes.
Besides, it is a practice that could be considered a fiscal fraud, as consultancy services invoiced as professional training would be VAT exempt, meaning yet another swindle of the taxpayers money.
It constitutes also an unfair competition towards those companies who offer professional services of adaptation of companies to the data protection normative, not to talk about the discrediting of the whole profession.
The Tripartite Foundation for Training in Employment advices all the training companies and consultants within the state bonus system of the existence of companies that offer free services related to the Law of Data Protection, financed by the credit assigned for professional training, a fact that could be constitutive of fraud.
The Royal Decree 395/2007 and the Ministerial Order 2307/2007 establish that this credit is exclusively aimed at formative actions and individual permits for training in employment. In he abovementioned normative, the article 10 a. defines the formative action as:
Action directed towards acquisition and improvement of the skills and qualifications of the employees. It can be structured into various modules with varying objectives, contents and duration of no less than 6 hours.
According to this, formative action needs to be programmed, and after the training the participants will have to have a chance to evaluate it.
If the abovementioned conditions are met, the training regarding the Law of Data Protection could be subsidized, with an exception to other issues related to the normative (implementation, building of files, legal advice etc.)
The Tripartite Foundation has started to check the proceedings and to build control mechanisms, so that the companies that are found out to have wrongly taken advantage of the subvention will have to return the subvention.
The companies that receive subvention for implementation, audition and legal advice regarding the LOPD, are required to return the corresponding subventions and face the interventions by the Public Service of State Employment and Inspection of Labour and Social Security.
To find out more follow this link (spanish).
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