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The Chapter deals with the use of sanctioning powers in the context of EU data protection law and reflects on the thorny relationship between different typologies of sanctions (criminal and administrative) in the light of the new administrative sanctioning powers of the Data Protection Authorities. The analysis starts form short historical presentation of the EU (secondary) laws dealing with data protection and, then it looks at changes to EU primary law brought about by the Treaty of Lisbon with an explicit imperative to improve EU data protection. The core of the analysis discusses the system of remedies in the GDPR and some examples of recent sanctioning practices by the national DPAs. The analysis is followed by three more reflective sections about supervisory convergence without creating new EU institutions, the administrative enforcement fray and defence rights and the role of criminal law in EU data protection law. The chapter also offers some guidance observations about the operationalisation of the threefold system of enforcement set up by EU data protection law.

Data protection is an EU law field that has undergone substantial change over the past few years. In April 2016 a five-year law-making process finally came to an end, with the adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation and the Police and Criminal Justice Data Protection Directive. The Directive, upon which this analysis is focused, is an ambitious text, aimed at assuming the data protection standard-setting role within the EU Justice and Home Affairs field at Member State level. At EU level Regulation 45/2001/EC is generally applicable on personal data processing by most of the EU agencies and bodies in the field. Its provisions are “particularised” and “complemented” by ad hoc substantive data protection law per each such actor. All of them, however, are to be aligned with the provisions of the Directive. Although supervision tasks are uniformly entrusted to the EDPS, the different mandates for each of the actors continue to apply. This, unnecessarily, complex legal architecture is found detrimental to the data protection purposes and ultimately against the requirements of Article 16 TFEU

Children’s rights law is often studied and perceived in isolation from the broader field of human rights law. This contribution explores the inter-relationship between children’s rights law and human rights law on older persons in order to see whether elements from each could successfully inform the other. Children’s rights law has a number of distinctive characteristics, such as the emphasis on the ‘best interests of the child’, the use of general principles, and the inclusion of ‘third parties’ (e.g. parents and other care-takers) in treaty provisions. In this contribution we ask two questions: whether these features could be a source of inspiration for elderly human rights law? And Whether children’s rights law could draw inspiration from developments with regard to the rights of older persons?

This contribution focuses on the impact of surveillance on the rule of law, due process and the presumption of innocence, key values and principles of a democratic order. It illustrates how they are implemented and enforced in contemporary surveillance societies, while referring to European law and case law.

The EU plays an increasingly important role in issues such as the fight against organised crime and the management of migration flows, transforming the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) into a priority of the EU's political and legislative agenda. This book investigates whether institutional change - the gradual communitarisation of the AFSJ - has triggered policy change, and in doing so, explores the nature and direction of this policy change. By analysing the role of the EU's institutions in a systematic, theory-informed and comparative way, it provides rich insights into the dynamics of EU decision-making in areas involving high stakes for human rights and civil liberties. Each chapter contains three sections examining: * the degree of policy change in the different AFSJ fields, ranging from immigration and counter-terrorism to data protection * the role of EU institutions in this process of change * a case study determining the mechanisms of change. The book will be of interest to practitioners, students and scholars of European politics and law, EU policy-making, security and migration studies, as well as institutional change.

Mobility, risk, security, freedom and technology are prominent key words in most of the debates on the current practices of data-sharing in the European Union (EU) – United States (US) context. Even more, transatlantic data-sharing and processing is probably among the best examples to show the interconnections, and tensions, among them. No single transatlantic agreement covers all these issues, but ‘immigration management’ and ‘national security’ are the subjects of a vast array of legal and technological instruments relying on the processing of personal data. Looking at these practices permits us to understand how human mobility is conceptualized by states and states’ agencies.

The overhaul of the EU data protection regime is a welcome development for various reasons: the 1995 Directive is largely outdated and cumbersome within an Internet (indeed, Web 2.0) environment. The 2008 Framework Decision is a practically unenforceable instrument, and even harmful in its weakness in protecting personal data. The Commission's proposed Regulation and Directive intended to replace it to improve the data protection afforded to individuals in their respective fields of application across the EU today. This paper considers some of the principles, some new, some old, that underpin the proposed new data protection framework, which was released on 25 January 2012. We offer an analysis of the key principles of lawfulness of the processing, access to justice, transparency and accountability principles intended to be all-encompassing, abstract and omnipresent. Some of the above principles may appear to be new, but such is not necessarily the case. For instance, the principle of lawfulness is central in the current 1995 Directive, but it reappears in an amended form in the proposed EU data protection framework. On the other hand, the principle of accountability is an addition to the list that will need to prove its value in practice. Regardless of the outcome of the EU data protection framework amendment process and the ultimate wording of the instruments that compose it, the application and visibility of these principles ought to remain unaffected.