On Legal Protection About The Right To Privacy In EU Countries

With the development of modern society,especially with the advancement of science and technology, the right to privacy is drawing more and more attention of people, and some new element is imported.Not only the famous people take the right to privacy as something important in their life, the common people also pay more and more attention to it.In fact, the right to privacy is not quite an ancient concept. It was first mentioned in the ethsis of On Privacy of Harvard Law Review by Louis D-Brandeis and Samuel D-Warren in 1890.During the following years, with the study of experts from all over the world, the right to privcy in modern meanings has been formed. Different countries use different ways to ackowledge and accept it through legislation or cases,making it a part of their law system. The right to privacy is becoming a focus for all the coutries. And that is also the aim of this ethsis.Although even until today, there is still no clear definition about the right to privacy, some influcial theories about this kind of right are also mentioned in this article. Among them are the statement in the ethsis of On Privacy,in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,and in the UN Report on the Right to Privacy of 1976. Development of the right to privacy is also mentioned. At the same time, complicated relationship between the right to privacy and other similar right , such as the right to news report and the right to know, is also studied.As a leading part in the development of law, the EU countries are quite excellent in this field.In practice, the methods of protection are diveded as direct protection, indirect protection and special protection. In this article,some influncial theories about the right to privacy are put forward,especially the historical development and current system of EU countries in the proteciton of the right to privcy.Besides, analysis of different protecting modes,like direct protecting of Germany and France, indirect protecting of Great Britian and special protecting in newly-appear areas in other EU countries,is also discussed in this essay.In details, Germany and France are examples of direct protection mode,and in the Civil Code of these two countries, exact statements can be observed. Great Britian adopts indirect mode,where the protection of the right to privacy can be illustrated in cases of different times.Besides, more special protection mode appears in EU countries, such as the protection for personal data, for finance privacy, for internet privacy and so on.In the end,with the basis of former studies and analysis, reality in current China is also taken into consideration.For historial and social reasones, the right to privacy is always ignored in China, not to mention legal protections. But in recent years, with the import of foreign theories and practice, and the strenthen of legal consciousness of Chinese people, the right to privacy is also emphasized in China. Statement can be found in the Constitution, in civil and criminal laws and in other legislation. Besides, some law experts also realize this problem, and some drafts about the right to privacy are put forward. So , with the studies by others, it is suggested that, by inheriting and absorbing the experience of EU countries ,we should adopt such a mode in which direct protection mode should be the main way while indirect and special protection mode should be the complementarity. Thus, by adating to special realties of China, the proteciton of the right to privacy in our countriy can get better development.