Data Protection and Trade in a World without Borders

Data Protection in a World without Borders’ investigates the tension between data protection and economic interests in personal data. Data is claimed to be the ‘new oil’. It has become an invaluable part of the economy and especially personal data is highly sought after. At the same time, privacy and data protection are topical issues. States or regions are trying to protect their citizens’ data and often resort to practices, which hinder data to flow across borders, having extraterritorial effects. Such practices may amount to trade barriers, which impact the economy detrimentally. In this thesis, we enquire whether this tension really exists and if there are international-plane governance solutions to remedy the issue of such national or regional legislation.