Brussels Calling: Big Data and Privacy

Abstract

The planned General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will fundamentally reform the data protection law in Europe. In Germany, the GDPR is going to replace the current Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz) and will be directly applied by the authorities and courts. The GDPR has been negotiated since 2012 by the European Commission, Council and Parliament. It will enter into force in May 2018. The different levels of data protection within the EU are supposed to be standardized. There will be some areas, however, in which the member states will be authorized to enact own laws (e.g. regarding employee data protection). This paves the way for the further development of big data. The GDPR will—as far as foreseeable—loosen the screws on some relevant focal points of the data protection law, such as the principle of purpose limitation. However, this will not go as far as critics have feared. The German data protection level will be slightly lowered, while the European level will be raised on average. This will also have a positive impact on German actors at times of cloud computing and cross-border data processing.