On 20 November 2012 the Ukrainian Parliament voted to accept all the President's amendments to the Law "On Amendments to the Data Protection Law" (the "Amendments").

The Amendments limit the powers of the State Service on Personal Data Protection to avoid overlap of its competence with other executive agencies. In particular, the Personal Data Protection Service will not be in charge of:

• technical regulation and assessment of information security systems' compliance;
• development of personal data protection regulations for digital resources of telecommunications systems of the State.

At the same time the following provisions of the Amendments remain unchanged:

• requirement to register databases of personal information collected from the employees will be abolished;
• EU countries and members of the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data will be given the status of countries with "sufficient level of data protection" by law thus facilitating cross-border data transfers between Ukraine and such countries;
• it will now be possible to process an individual's personal data where contract with this individual is concluded; it will no longer be necessary to obtain a separate consent in such cases.

The Amendments should have positive impact on cross-border personal data transfers and simplify the handling of personal information about employees by their employers. However, they do not abolish the requirement to register other types of personal databases, to obtain individuals' consents to data processing, and do not affect other formalities.

It is expected that the Amendments would be signed by the President and come into effect shortly.