Officials from the EU and World Anti-Doping Agency promised Friday to intensify talks on privacy disputes, warning that continued disagreement could hurt global cooperation in catching drug cheats.
WADA headed off a crisis with the European Union last weekend by revising its data protection guidelines to satisfy European legal demands.
But officials at an anti-doping conference in Athens said several important privacy issues remain unresolved _ including WADA's ability to protect the data of European athletes when using its database in countries with a poor privacy record.
"We're never going to have full peace. There will always be something that will be discussed. But we don't have a conflict ... whereas two weeks ago I would say that we had conflict," WADA director general David Howman said in an interview.
He said further discussion would take place on the transfer of athletes' data, the publication of doping offenses and, separately, implementation of "whereabouts" rules to track elite athletes for testing out of competition.
Howman said he expected the two sides to reach agreement.
WADA's vice chairman, Arne Ljungqvist, said many of the privacy issues being discussed could have serious practical consequences if not properly worked out.
"In (2011) the IAAF with have the World Championships in South Korea. Should the European labs not be authorized to transfer data because of some protection issue, we cannot make use of European anti-doping labs. That's a fact. The whole sport would suffer enormously," Ljungqvist said.
He dismissed suggestions that doping violations should not be made public and only be referred to sporting federations.
"How do we handle doping cases at the Olympic Games? Are we supposed to keep them secret and switch the medals in secret, behind a curtain somewhere?" he said.
WADA officials also defended new, tougher rules requiring athletes to declare their whereabouts each day of the year.
Ljungqvist said advances in drugmaking technology meant testing rules had to be adapted.
"The pharmaceutical industry is intentionally trying to produce substances with long term effects, that need not to be taken frequently," he said. "If you introduce a period of (testing) immunity, you invite people to take types of drugs that will have an efficacy during that period but will not be detectable afterwards."
He added: "If we don't have an efficient out-of-competition testing system we can forget about the anti-doping fight."
European Commission officials at the conference said privacy negotiations involving expert committees from the two sides would resume next month.
