The Constitutional Implications of Fundamental Rights Legislation in the Field of EU Data Protection Law

The PhD project will try to answer the question: “What are the boundaries of the fundamental right to data protection in the European Union?” I will formulate an answer to this question from two angles.

First, I will assess the scope of application of the fundamental right to data protection, which is an unusual right in the EU legal order, since there is a legal basis making it possible to adopt legislation about this fundamental right. In assessing whether the fact that there is specifying legislation on this right leads to an unusual scope of application compared to other rights, I will compare it to the right to family life, a ‘more classical’ fundamental right where there is no such legal basis or specifying legislation.

Secondly, I will assess the boundaries of the fundamental right to data protection from the viewpoint of limitations to that right. In assessing whether the possible limitations on this fundamental right are indeed different because of the specifying legislation, I will compare it to the same fundamental right under the European Convention of Human Rights, where there is no specifying legislation, but only Article 8 of the ECHR on that right.

In that way, my central research question would be grounded in the idea of the fundamental right to data protection as an unusual right in the EU legal order, and will therefore assess whether that fact leads to an unusual scope of application and to unusual reasoning on possible limitations to that right.