Introduction and “Checklist”

Although the EC Data Protection Directive was adopted in 1995 to harmonise the level of data protection in Europe, data protection standards still varied considerably among the individual EU Member States. To solve this problem, the European legislature adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in April 2016. It entered into force on 25 May 2018 and has been directly applicable in all EU Member States since. The GDPR has a cross-border scope of application and provides for numerous new or increased data protection obligations. This chapter contains a “checklist” that highlights the most essential obligations under the Regulation.