The implication of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on the Global Data Privacy

Abstract

Today, more than ever, data continues to be integral in the way life of people stemming from individualized to corporate life with marginal respect to jurisdictional barriers. With the advent and progressive advancements of digital economies, data has become definitive shaping every decision undertaken by individuals, businesses, governments and the globe at large. Free movement of data across borders underpins the relationships forged between countries and regions which shapes the global economy. However, despite free movement of data across borders being a cornerstone to the globalized economy, the flow of personalized data within and outside justifications ensues remarkable concerns over privacy protection. Jurisdictional integrations are limited or espoused by the data regulations enacted by a country or a region. The regulations have unilateral, bilateral and international implications on the globalized as parties pursuit to complying with the underpinned provisions. On May 25, 2018, the European Opinion enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which emanated significant concerns from the global community over its ability to hamper international relations. Therefore, this paper evaluates the implication of EU’s GDPR on the global data protection debunked its vitality and challenges. The global data sharing and protection norms progress to evolve with keen sensitivity on personal data protection. Data protection has always been a contentious topic but with the development of information technology, it has global concerns due to the easy flow of data across jurisdictions. At no time in the past four decades as data privacy protection ever been so prominently, intensively and globally debated. Today, information privacy is no longer a sector-wise policies issues but rather has been polarized to a deserved international public policy attention. Therefore, it is quite obvious in modern times for corporations and governments to create data protection regulations envisaged at ensuring the utmost protection of personal data. Despite many countries and regions over the years having developed several data protection regulations, the academic literature has often focused on examining the distinction between the data privacy laws in one region to another with minimal empirical insights on the protected data covered within the comparative contexts and their implications. Europe being a pillar player in the globalized economy, EU’s unveiling of the GDPR raises inexhaustible questions on how it would implement every aspect of data protection for both companies and organizations within the EU and those outside but have operational activities in the region or intend to. Questions arise due to the need for data protection laws to not only set implementable privacy rights but ensure they are balanced with the legitimate interests of organizations (Bennett, 2018). Therefore, it is imperative to understand the implication of GDPR both intended and unintended as well as how it shapes the global data privacy protection and transactions.