The Council of Europe (CoE) announced - on 12 April 2013 - that Uruguay has become the first non-European country to accede to the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (Convention 108) and its Additional Protocol. The treaty will enter into force in Uruguay on 1 August 2013, making it the 45th country to be party to the Convention.

Martín Pesce and Stephania Bresque, Senior Associate and Associate respectively at FERRERE, said: "This is another significant step for Uruguay in the field of data protection, after being granted adequacy status by the European Commission last year." As DataGuidance previously reported, this decision - issued on 23 August 2012 - made Latin America the second most 'adequate' continent behind Europe itself.

"Both the adequacy declaration and the incorporation of the Convention to the national legal system places Uruguay as the Latin-American country that is most aligned with European [standards] for data protection," said Pesce and Bresque. "It also definitively puts Uruguay in the spotlight for the setup of data centers at a global level, which is expected to trigger the development of areas of high added value, such as e-health or telemedicine."

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