OBSTACLES TO TRANSATLANTIC HARMONIZATION OF DATA PRIVACY LAW IN CONTEXT

OBSTACLES À L’HARMONISATION TRANSATLANTIQUE DU DROIT DE LA PROTECTION DES DONNÉES PERSONNELLES DANS LEUR CONTEXTE

W. Voss

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Globalization seems to call for the harmonization of laws, especially in sectors affecting global business, and this is all the truer with respect to laws affecting the technology industry, with the facility of its cross-border communications networks. Data privacy law on both sides of the Atlantic benefits from common origins but eventually divergence occurred, causing compliance challenges for companies and the potential halting of cross-border data flows from the European Union to the United States. Harmonization could possibly obviate such difficulties, and there is a window of opportunity to achieve this with discussion in the United States of a potential federal data privacy law. After setting out the historical context, this study posits and details three major obstacles to full-scale transatlantic harmonization of data privacy law, from the perspective of what has become the predominant data privacy model-that of the European Union. These are: laissez-faire policy and neoliberalism in the United States (and resulting focus on self-regulation there), the lobbying power of the U.S. technology industry giants in a conducive U.S. legislative system, and differing constitutional provisions on both sides of the Atlantic.

Keywords: neoliberalism; laissez-faire policy; lobbying; FTC; harmonization of laws; data privacy; GDPR; Data protection; fundamental rights; Droits fondamentaux; Freedom of speech; First amendment; Protection des données personnelles; RGPD; Liberté d'expression; Premier amendement; Néolibéralisme; Laisser-faire; harmonisation des lois (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02482174v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, 2019, 2019 (2), pp.405-463

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02482174v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02482174

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().