Two decades of Article 8 CFR: A critical exploration of the fundamental right to personal data protection in EU law

Abstract

The fundamental right to personal data protection has been in the centre of diverse academic discussions since its enshrinement in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Meanwhile, it has also been facing an unsettled treatment within European case law. Its tight connection with and hitherto jurisprudential dependence on the right to privacy, as well as influences by preceding legal instruments, such as European secondary law, and national legal concepts, like the German informational self-determination, continue to yield numerous scholarly debates. In this way, the fundamental right to personal data protection has yet to attain its independent status and concrete conceptualisation, that is commonly embraced by academia and judiciary. This chapter delves into the origins, the discussions and the jurisprudence since the birth of the right to personal data protection, to suggest a novel approach that encourages its coming of age as a distinct and standalone fundamental right.