유럽연합(EU) 개인정보보호법의 특징과 최근 발전

European Union is leading the development of data protection law in the world. First, on December 15, 2015, general agreement has been reached on the General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) after three years of negotiation among EU institutions such as the European Commission, the European Parliament and the EU Council. The GDPR, which provides data subjects with more diverse and stronger rights than the current EU data protection law, will apply directly to all EU member states two years after when formally adopted in early 2016. Second, two months earlier, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the Commission’s US Safe Harbour decision is invalid after finding that the United States does not ensure an adequate level of protection. The EU data protection law has caused a ratcheting up of data protection law of other countries worldwide. Compared to the United States’ privacy law, the EU data protection law has unique characteristics. First, it applies to both public and private sectors. Second, it prohibits all data processing outside the data protection law. Third, it gives data subjects rights to agree, rectify, or withdraw data processing. Fourth, it has significant effect on non-EU countries. New privacy law, the GDPR, is slightly different from current Directive 95/46/EC. First, it applies directly to each EU member state unlike the current law, Directive 95/46/EC, which only requires all member states to enact national law based upon it. Second, transferring data of EU citizens outside the EU are not allowed unless the controller assures an adequate level of privacy protection. Third, new rights such as the right to erasure and the right to data portability are introduced for the benefit of data subjects. Especially, data subjects may request deletion of their own data when they no longer want their personal data to be processed and there are no legitimate grounds for data processors to retain them. Fourth, new categories of personal data are adopted. Data pseudonymization is encouraged for big data innovation.