EC Study on Implementation of Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC

Abstract

The report presented here contains the findings, analyses, conclusions and recommendations of a study into the implementation of EC Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (the main EC Data Protection Directive) by the then 15 EU Member States, carried out by the author between October 2001 and September 2002 on behalf of the University of Essex, under a study contract with the European Commission. As presented here, the report consists of three parts, with the first part itself divided into two, as follows: *Part I.A of this report provides a comparative summary and analysis of the national legal provisions on data protection in the 15 Member States, by reference to (all) the articles in the Directive which must be implemented by the Member States (Articles 1 - 28) and broadly in the order of those articles (see the contents page to Part I.A for details). *Part I.B focusses on the implications for the internal market of the divergencies between the national laws, identified in Part I.A, and notes certain constitutional issues and certain matters concerning non-EU controllers. *Part II deals with the processing of sound and image data and with the future of personal data processing and of data protection. *Part III contains a summary, conclusions and recommendations. Some controversial aspects of this work, which led the Commission to accept and publish only the Comparative Summary (i.e., Part 1.A), are explained in an introductory note About This Report, at the beginning of the paper. The report is presented here in the form in which it was attached to my book on Data Protection Law in Practice in the EU, FEDMA/DMA-USA, Brussels/New York, 2005, ISBN 1-931361-49-5.