The Brussels Privacy Hub (BPH) is organising a Doctoral Seminar series to give the opportunity to Ph.D. candidates working on privacy and data protection topics at the Law, Science, Technology and Society (LSTS) to present and discuss their work in progress. The aim of the series is to offer Ph.D. students at all research stages a training ground to refine and practice debating their scientific work, and to receive qualified feedback and questions from their peers and privacy and data protection experts. To this aim, each seminar will include a short presentation by the Ph.D. candidate, followed by an open discussion session with the audience. Seminars are also open to external participants. Find more information here.
On 14 June 2021, Michalina Nadolna Peeters will present her PhD project on 'Making your data protection rights effective: The potential and limitations of GDPR private enforcement'.
For questions on registration, please reach out to laura.drechsler@vub.be.
ABSTRACT:
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) brought about theoretical strengthening of numerous rights of individuals regarding the protection of their fundamental rights, especially the right to personal data protection. However, neither their exercise nor seeking remedies for their infringements is straight-forward. The enforcement landscape is complex as it involves numerous actors and diverging procedural frameworks. The presentation seeks to first explore the public avenue of enforcement, namely having individuals’ rights enforced via national supervisory authorities, to then turn to exploring the potential and limitations of enforcing these rights directly in the courts of law (GDPR private enforcement). Despite the so-called “golden standard” provided by the GDPR, there is a lack of clarity about how individuals can bring private, one-party and collective, actions to enforce this standard. This limits individuals’ control over their data as their rights might remain unenforceable.
The presentation seeks to sketch the preliminary goals and methodology for the PhD project aiming to provide clarity on procedural aspects of enforcing individuals’ rights directly in courts and its many interactions with enforcement through supervisory authorities. The specific purpose of the presentation within the context of the Doctoral Seminar is to collect critical views regarding the planned research goals and methodological approach, as well as potential ideas as to their improvement.