Abstract
The European Union is well-known for its high levels of data protection and concern about the effects of data sharing on individuals’ privacy. The 1995 Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) established clear norms that have guided the development of data protection laws at the national level. However, these principles have often been tested by advances in the field of law enforcement, where personal data has increasingly been processed for the purpose of fighting crime. This tension has become more problematic with the advent of the Treaty of Lisbon, which has ‘constitutionalised’ data protection as a fundamental right in Article 16 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. This chapter explores to what extent the tension between data protection and data processing has been solved in the process of recasting the former provisions for the protection of personal data. The ‘package approach’ to the reform process has managed to improve the coherence of data protection in the private and the public sectors, but the tensions between privacy and security remain—especially in the law enforcement domain.
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Notes
- 1.
A Framework Decision is the term given to the old legal instruments of the third pillar. They are similar to a Directive but have different legal effects (especially when it comes to scrutiny by the Court of Justice) and were decided under unanimity of member states, after a (non-binding) opinion of the European Parliament.
- 2.
The LIBE Committee voted in favour of a negotiating mandate for the directive with 47 votes in favour, 4 against and 1 abstention (European Parliament 2014a: 8).
- 3.
Trialogues (or trilogues) are informal negotiations held between a team of negotiators from the Council and the European Parliament (and the participation of the Commission) with the aim of reaching an agreement that can receive the support of member states and the EP’s plenary (for further information, see Roederer-Rynning and Greenwood 2015).
- 4.
Rapporteurs are the MEPs responsible for writing the EP report, which contains the amendments proposed to the Commission’s proposal. They also head the EP’s negotiating team when it comes to finding an agreement with the Council. Shadow rapporteurs are MEPs from other political groups that follow and participate in negotiations.
- 5.
Eventually included in a modified version in Articles 63–67.
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Ripoll Servent, A. (2017). Protecting or Processing?. In: Schünemann, W., Baumann, MO. (eds) Privacy, Data Protection and Cybersecurity in Europe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53634-7_8
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