From market-making tool to fundamental right: the role of the Court of Justice in data protection’s identity crisis

The European Data Protection Directive pursues dual, and potentially conflicting, objectives; it aims to facilitate the establishment of the internal market be enabling the free flow of personal data and to protects fundamental rights. This paper will examine the peculiar relationship between these dual objectives. Its aim is twofold. Firstly, to demonstrate that the ambiguity regarding the relationship between the Directive’s dual objectives could lead to doubts concerning its validity. Secondly, to demonstrate, by reference to the case law of the Court of Justice, that the Directive’s market-making characteristics have played second fiddle to its fundamental rights dimension in recent years; the Court has loosened the Directive’s links to the internal market while placing increasing emphasis on the fundamental rights vocation of data protection. One common theme emerges from the paper; the aims of European Data Protection policy are unclear and as such it is bound to suffer an ‘identity crisis’.