Lex Personalitatis & technology-driven law

Abstract

The ink had barely dried on the signatures to the Lisbon Treaty in December 2007 before the debate started on what it all meant for privacy and data protection. In some countries and especially the UK the actual status of the treaty continues to be debated: is it a European Constitution in all but name or is it at least a quasi-constitutional piece of that part of international law we now term European law? Whatever its constitutional status,1 the new document reinforces data protection law by dedicating a specific section to it at Art.l6B.2 Separate to the Treaty, in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union,3 both a separate specific section on privacy (Art.7) and a section on personal data (Art.8) are maintained. By having these two rights side by side, one begs the question "so where do they differ? Are they still related and hierarchical...as the preamble to the Council of Europe's 1981 Data Protection Convention would have us believe or, 25 years down the line from launch of Convention 108, have they grown distinct?