The banker and the Data Protection Officer (DPO). From an obligation to inform and advise to an obligation to assist.

Summary The parallelism of the activities of bankers and Data Protection Officers is particularly interesting from the point of view of the obligation to inform and advise, a concept that is undergoing significant change. Our thesis is that this obligation evolves in a parallel way for these two professionals, but ultimately takes a different option. In both cases, this obligation tends to become an obligation of assistance, but it is of a different nature: if in its classic form with the banker, the obligation of assistance is passive, in its current form with the DPO, it is active. This divergence can be explained by the stakes and the logic, which are not identical. With the Banker, it is the business logic that takes precedence and he cannot interfere. On the other hand, with the Data Protection Officer (DPO), it is the logic of protecting people, and more particularly their data, that takes precedence, which justifies and even imposes his interference. It is therefore logical that the assistance is passive in one case and active in the other.