Limiting or Promoting Surveillance? The European Union’s Ambiguous Role in the Regulation of 'Big Data'

EU institutions have established a number of important initiatives in order to strengthen individual rights in relation to public and private surveillance in the era of “big data”. One core element is the data protection package (including a regulation and a directive) that was proposed by the European Commission in early 2012 and has been intensively debated by the European Parliament, the Council and by the wider public since then. A number of recent landmark decisions by the Court of Justice of the EU have strengthened the fundamental right to data protection guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and by the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, especially the data retention (April 2014), Google (May 2014) and safe harbor (October 2015) cases. However, at the same time, EU institutions such as the Commission and the Justice and Home Affairs Council have promoted additional forms of data retention and surveillance, e.g. the passenger name records (PNR) and the “smart borders” package proposed by the Commission. From a trans-disciplinary legal and political science perspective, the paper will explore how the ambiguous role that EU institutions play in relation to surveillance can be explained by factors such as the internal plurality of the EU and its institutions and by the specific influence of incidents and threats (e.g. terrorist acts) on internal security policy.