International transfers of personal data and corporate compliance under Directive 95/46/EC, the draft Regulation

摘要

Data protection has been in the legal spotlight for over tour decades, but it still does not operate within a harmonised framework, even within the EU. As it has been shown in this article, a number of the administrative obstacles currently faced by data controllers/processors derive from the fragmentation of national laws within the Union, caused by the very essence of the Directive as a legislative tool not directly applicable to Member States. The move by the Commission to use a different tool this time, in the form of a Regulation, to repeal the Directive may well resolve this uncertainty, and by an analogous application an international, binding agreement could do the same for global transfers. However, in terms of content, apart from the simplification of certain procedures, the draft Regulation does not introduce radical changes.