THE CONCEPT OF PERSONAL DATA: FROM ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVE TO PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the concept of personal data. Although notion of the personal data was introduced to data protection legislation quite a while ago, a number of issues has still remained unresolved. One of such issues is the identifiability, a condition for qualification of certain data as the personal data. This condition ignited an academic controversy resulted in a juxtaposition of the absolute and relative approaches to the concept of personal data and, subsequently, pseudonymised data. Yet, both these approaches are observable in the GDPR. Consequently, application of a moderate approach (in-between the absolute and relative approaches) may be suggested. Application of the moderate approach is a means to balance the protection of personal data against other EU rights and freedoms, such as the conduct of business. Finally, by the way of the moderate approach a legal status of the initial data controller may be distinguished from a subsequent recipient of pseudonymised data.