Introduction
The digital economy has made borders increasingly invisible. A Belgian fintech company can hire an Albanian development team overnight, share a codebase on Monday, and have a product in production by Friday. What does not move as fast is regulatory awareness.
When a Belgian company transfers personal data to an Albanian IT supplier — whether that is customer records, employee data, or application logs containing identifiable information — it is not operating in a legal vacuum. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) governs that transfer, and the rules are specific, enforceable, and carry penalties that Belgian businesses are increasingly discovering the hard way.
This article is a practical guide for Belgian companies engaging Albanian IT partners, and for Albanian IT firms that want to understand what EU clients will require from them. It is not legal advice. It is the informed baseline every business decision-maker should have before signing a contract.
Why Albania Is Not “Just Another EU Country”
The EU’s GDPR framework divides the world into two categories: countries with an adequacy decision and everyone else.
An adequacy decision means the European Commission has formally determined that a third country’s data protection laws offer a level of protection essentially equivalent to the EU’s. Countries on that list — including Japan, the United Kingdom, and South Korea — can receive personal data from EU entities with minimal additional formalities. ¹
Albania is not on that list.
This is not a political judgment about Albania’s legal quality. It is simply the current state. Albania has made significant progress: it passed Law No. 120/2022 “On Personal Data Protection”, which explicitly aligns with GDPR and replaced the older Law No. 9887 of 2008. The country’s supervisory authority, the Commissioner for the Right of Information and Personal Data Protection (IDPPC), is an active member of international data protection networks. ²
But until the European Commission issues a formal adequacy decision for Albania — a process that has not yet been initiated — GDPR’s cross-border transfer rules apply in full every time personal data moves from Belgium to Albania.
What “Personal Data Transfer” Actually Means in Practice
Many businesses underestimate the scope of what counts as a data transfer. It is not just sending a spreadsheet of customer names. Under GDPR, a transfer occurs whenever personal data is made accessible to a party in a third country. ³
In an IT outsourcing context, this includes:
- Giving an Albanian development team access to a production or staging database containing real user data
- Using a shared project management tool where Albanian developers can see client-related information
- Storing application logs on a server physically or legally controlled by an Albanian company
- Providing Albanian QA testers with real datasets instead of anonymized ones
- A Belgian company’s employees remoting into systems hosted in Albania
If you use anonymized or synthetic data, the analysis changes significantly, and this is worth building into your workflows deliberately.
The Legal Mechanisms You Must Use
Because Albania lacks an adequacy decision, GDPR Article 46 requires that any transfer be accompanied by appropriate safeguards. ⁴ In practice, for the Belgian-Albanian business relationship, the most relevant mechanism is Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs).
Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs)
SCCs are standardized contract templates issued by the European Commission. The current version, adopted in June 2021, replaced the older 2010 clauses and introduced a modular structure covering four transfer scenarios. ⁵
For most Belgian-Albanian IT engagements, the relevant module is:
Module Two: Controller to Processor — where the Belgian company (the data controller, the entity that decides why and how data is processed) transfers data to the Albanian IT firm (the data processor, the entity that processes data on the controller’s behalf).
The SCCs must be incorporated verbatim into the contract between both parties. Parties cannot modify the substantive clauses, though they can add supplementary commercial terms alongside them. ⁵
The SCCs cover key obligations including:
- Purpose limitation (the Albanian firm can only use the data for the agreed purpose)
- Data subject rights (mechanisms to respond to individual requests)
- Security obligations
- Sub-processor restrictions (the Albanian firm cannot bring in a sub-contractor without the Belgian company’s knowledge and equivalent contractual coverage)
- Data breach notification timelines
- Return or deletion of data upon contract termination
Data Processing Agreement (DPA)
Separately — and this is sometimes confused with SCCs — GDPR Article 28 requires a Data Processing Agreement between any controller and its processor, regardless of geography. ⁶ If the Albanian IT firm is processing personal data on behalf of the Belgian company, a DPA is mandatory even before the transfer question arises. In practice, for third-country transfers, the SCCs and DPA obligations are often consolidated into a single contract document.
The Schrems II Requirement: Transfer Impact Assessments
In July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield in the landmark Schrems II ruling (Case C-311/18). ⁷ Beyond striking down that specific framework, the ruling established a principle that has reshaped all third-country transfers: signing SCCs is not enough on its own.
Before transferring data, the exporting party (the Belgian company) must conduct a Transfer Impact Assessment (TIA) — an evaluation of whether the legal environment in the destination country undermines the protections the SCCs are supposed to guarantee.
Specifically, you are looking at whether Albanian law could compel the Albanian IT firm to disclose personal data to public authorities in ways that exceed what would be permissible under GDPR. ⁸
For Albania, this assessment is relatively manageable. The country is an EU accession candidate, has adopted GDPR-aligned national law, and is subject to the Council of Europe’s Convention 108+ on data protection, which it ratified. ⁹ These are positive factors in a TIA. However, the assessment still needs to happen and be documented. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published detailed guidance on how to conduct a TIA, including a six-step process. ¹⁰
Practical recommendation: A TIA does not need to be a 50-page legal document for a standard IT outsourcing relationship. A structured, documented analysis of Albanian law based on publicly available sources, your specific data types, and your contractual safeguards is sufficient in most cases. Keep it on file. Supervisory authorities can request it.
What the Belgian Data Protection Authority Expects
Belgium’s supervisory authority is the Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit / Autorité de protection des données (GBA/APD). ¹¹ It has enforcement powers including administrative fines up to €20 million or 4% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher.
The GBA/APD follows EDPB guidance closely and has issued decisions touching on controller-processor relationships and third-country transfers. Belgian companies should be aware that:
- If a data breach occurs at the Albanian IT partner’s end, the Belgian company (as controller) remains primarily liable to affected individuals and the GBA/APD
- “We didn’t know our supplier was non-compliant” is not a defense — GDPR Article 28 requires controllers to use only processors offering sufficient guarantees, and to verify those guarantees ⁶
- Sub-processing chains need to be mapped: if the Albanian IT firm uses cloud infrastructure hosted in the US or another third country, additional transfer mechanisms or analysis may be needed
What Albanian IT Companies Should Prepare
For Albanian IT firms actively pursuing or working with Belgian and EU clients, compliance readiness is increasingly a sales requirement, not just a legal one.
At minimum, prepare the following:
1. A template Data Processing Agreement aligned with GDPR Article 28 requirements, ready to present to EU clients. Having this document prepared signals professionalism and reduces friction in the sales cycle.
2. Familiarity with the EU SCC modules, specifically Module Two, and the ability to review and execute these contracts without delays.
3. A clear sub-processor list. EU clients will ask which third-party tools and cloud providers you use and where their data centers are located. AWS Frankfurt versus AWS Virginia is a meaningful answer in this context.
4. Basic security documentation. ISO 27001 certification is the gold standard, but at minimum, a documented Information Security Policy, access control procedures, and an incident response plan are expected by EU clients under the SCCs’ security obligations.
5. Awareness of IDPPC. Albania’s national supervisory authority can be a resource. The IDPPC has published guidance materials and is aligned with European data protection norms. ²
A Practical Checklist for Belgian Companies
Before transferring personal data to an Albanian IT partner, work through the following:
- Identify the data. What categories of personal data will the Albanian firm access? Is any of it sensitive (health, financial, biometric)?
- Classify the relationship. Is the Albanian firm a processor (acting on your instructions) or an independent controller? This determines which SCC module applies.
- Execute a DPA. GDPR Article 28 compliance before data flows.
- Incorporate SCCs. Use the current June 2021 clauses. Do not use the deprecated 2010 versions.
- Conduct and document a TIA. Use the EDPB’s six-step framework. Keep it proportionate to the risk.
- Map sub-processors. Require the Albanian firm to notify you of any new sub-processors before engaging them.
- Verify security measures. Request documentation. Conduct due diligence, even informally.
- Record the transfer in your ROPA. Your Record of Processing Activities (required under GDPR Article 30) must include third-country transfers and the safeguards used.
Conclusion
Working with Albanian IT talent is a legitimate, commercially smart choice for Belgian companies. The talent pool is real, the cost advantage is real, and the time zone alignment is genuinely convenient. None of that is undermined by GDPR compliance — it is simply part of the operational setup.
The companies that get this wrong are not the ones that lack good intentions. They are the ones that assumed GDPR was a domestic concern, or that signed a contract without knowing SCCs existed, or that never documented a TIA because no one asked for one — until something went wrong.
Get the contractual foundation right from the start. For Albanian IT firms, proactively building this compliance readiness into your offering is a competitive differentiator in the EU market. The regulatory environment is not going to simplify. The companies that treat compliance as infrastructure rather than bureaucracy are the ones that will grow EU client relationships sustainably.
Sources and Resources
- European Commission, “Adequacy decisions — How the EU determines if a non-EU country has an adequate level of data protection”: https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/international-dimension-data-protection/adequacy-decisions_en
- Commissioner for the Right of Information and Personal Data Protection, Albania (IDPPC): https://www.idp.al/en/
- EDPB, “Guidelines 05/2021 on the Interplay between the application of Article 3 and the provisions on international transfers as per Chapter V of the GDPR”: https://edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/guidelines/guidelines-052021-interplay-between-application-article-3_en
- GDPR Article 46 — Transfers subject to appropriate safeguards: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-46-gdpr/
- European Commission, Standard Contractual Clauses (adopted June 4, 2021): https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/international-dimension-data-protection/standard-contractual-clauses-scc_en
- GDPR Article 28 — Processor: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-28-gdpr/
- Court of Justice of the EU, Case C-311/18 (Schrems II), Judgment of 16 July 2020: https://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?num=C-311/18
- EDPB, “Recommendations 01/2020 on measures that supplement transfer tools to ensure compliance with the EU level of protection of personal data”: https://edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/recommendations/recommendations-012020-measures-supplement-transfer-tools_en
- Council of Europe, Convention 108+ — Albania ratification status: https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list?module=signatures-by-treaty&treatynum=223
- EDPB, Six-step framework for Transfer Impact Assessments (within Recommendations 01/2020 above): see Annex 3 of the document linked in source 8
- Belgian Data Protection Authority (GBA/APD): https://www.dataprotectionauthority.be
- Albanian Law No. 120/2022 “On Personal Data Protection” (official gazette reference): https://www.idp.al/en/legislation/
- GDPR Article 30 — Records of processing activities: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-30-gdpr/