Confusing Fundamental Rights Protection in Europe: Loopholes in European Fundamental Rights Protection Exemplified on European Data Protection Rules

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Boehm
Keyword(s):  
Data Protection ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
European Data

Second-Generation European Data Protection and Professional Journalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-99
Author(s):  
David Erdos
Keyword(s):  
Data Protection ◽  
News Media ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Working Party ◽  
State Level ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Regulatory Guidance ◽  
European Data ◽  
The Right

This chapter explores the legislative interface between data protection and the professional journalistic media under the Data Protection Directive (DPD) and then examines the formal regulatory guidance produced by European Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) during the same period. Despite the DPD’s emphasis on ensuring a careful balancing between equally fundamental rights, statutory provisions at State level were profoundly divergent. In broad terms, Northern European States tended to grant journalism sweeping exemptions from data protection, whilst Southern and Eastern European States set down tough standards even in this sensitive area. These media system differences mapped on to broader cultural fissures concerning individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and attitudes towards power inequalities. In the great majority of cases the national DPA retained a supervisory role in this area and over 60 per cent of these bodies, as well as the Article 29 Working Party, had published some statutory guidance. However, this guidance was often confined to a brief elucidation of the importance of contextual rights balancing coupled, in a number of cases, with an emphasis on promoting a co-regulatory connection between statutory supervision and self-regulation. A minority of DPAs did produce much more extensive guidance focusing especially on children’s rights over data, image rights and visual/audio-visual content, and the right to be forgotten and digital news/media archives.

scholarly journals EUROPEAN UNION DATA PROTECTION LAW AND MEDIA EXPRESSION: FUNDAMENTALLY OFF BALANCE

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Erdos
Keyword(s):  
Data Protection ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
European Economic Area ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Criminal Convictions ◽  
European Data ◽  
Data Protection Directive ◽  
Fundamental Rights And Freedoms

AbstractThe European Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC requires all European Economic Area (EEA) jurisdictions to provide an equivalent regime protecting the privacy and other fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons in relation to personal data processing, whilst also shielding media expression from the default substantive requirements as necessary to ensure a balance between fundamental rights. Through a comprehensive coding of the derogations set out in each jurisdiction's data protection laws, this article provides the first systematic analysis of whether this has in fact been achieved. It is demonstrated that there is a total lack of even minimal harmonization in this area, with many laws providing for patently unbalanced results especially as regards the publication of sensitive information, which includes criminal convictions and political opinion, and the collection of information without notice direct from the data subject. This reality radically undermines European data protection's twin purposes of ensuring the free flow of personal data and protecting fundamental rights, an outcome which remains largely unaddressed by the proposed new Data Protection Regulation. Practical suggestions are put forward to ameliorate these troubling inconsistencies within the current process of reform.

A Cosmopolitan Legal Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alec Stone Sweet ◽  
Clare Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Legal Order ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Perpetual Peace ◽  
The World ◽  
European System ◽  
Constitutional Justice

The book provides an introduction to Kantian constitutional theory and the European system of rights protection. Part I sets out Kant’s blueprint for achieving Perpetual Peace and constitutional justice within and beyond the nation state. Part II applies these ideas to explain the gradual constitutionalization of a Cosmopolitan Legal Order: a transnational legal system in which justiciable rights are held by individuals; where public officials bear the obligation to fulfil the fundamental rights of all who come within the scope of their jurisdiction; and where domestic and transnational judges supervise how officials act. The authors then describe and assess the European Court’s progressivie approach to both the absolute and qualified rights. Today, the Court is the most active and important rights-protecting court in the world, its jurisprudence a catalyst for the construction of a cosmopolitan constitution in Europe and beyond.

European Data Protection Regulation, Journalism, and Traditional Publishers

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Erdos
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
General Data Protection Regulation ◽  
European Data ◽  
General Data ◽  
Professional Artists ◽  
Normative Perspective

This book explores the interface between European data protection and the freedom of expression activities of traditional journalism, professional artists, and both academic and non-academic writers from both an empirical and normative perspective. It draws on an exhaustive examination of both historical and contemporary public domain material and a comprehensive questionnaire of European Data Protection Authorities (DPAs). Empirically it is found that, notwithstanding an often confusing statutory landscape, DPAs have sought to develop an approach to regulating the journalistic media based on contextual rights balancing. However, they have struggled to secure a clear and specified criterion of strictness as regards standard-setting or a consistent and reliable approach to enforcement. DPAs have appeared even more confused as regards other traditional publishers, largely abstaining from regulating most professional artists and writers but attempting to subject all academic disciplines to onerous statutory restrictions established for medical, scientific, and related research. From these findings, it is argued that balancing contextual rights has value and should be both generalized across all traditional publishers and systematically and sensitively developed through structured and robust co-regulation. Such co-regulation should adopt the new code of conduct and monitoring provisions included in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as a broad guideline. DPAs should accord strong deference to any codes and monitoring bodies which verifiably meet the accredited criteria but must engage more proactively when these are absent. In any case, DPAs should also intervene directly as regards particularly serious or systematic issues and have an increasingly important role in ensuring a joined-up approach between traditional publishing and new media activity.

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