Digital
General Data Protection Regulation — EU law governing the processing of personal data of EU residents.
Article 1 states the Regulation’s purpose in two halves that are easy to forget are both there. It “lays down rules relating to the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and rules relating to the free movement of personal data”, and Article 1(3) makes the second half operative: “the free movement of personal data within the Union shall be neither restricted nor prohibited for reasons connected with the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data.” The GDPR is a single-market instrument as much as a rights instrument. Its material scope, in Article 2, reaches “the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automated means and … processing other than by automated means of personal data which form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system” — which is why a structured paper file is caught and a disordered pile of notes generally is not.
What this source settles. Where the text above quotes a regulation or a statute, that instrument governs and its own later amendments prevail over any summary. Where it quotes an institution’s explanatory page or a standard-setter, it is authoritative for how the body understands its own regime and for the figures the body itself publishes — and not for whether the regime works. Read the instrument for obligations, and look beyond the issuer for evaluation.
From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).
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