Research About Transborder Flows Of Personal Data In EU Data Protection Law

Since the nineties of the 20 th century,the development of internet and the continuous innovation of information technologies radically change originally scattered transborder flows of personal data,which has become an important impetus of the economic globalization.Personal data has increasingly become an important production element and the lifeline of multinational companies,while on the other hand,interdependent global economy also put forward urgent requirements about personal data's global flows.Due to the existence of different law scopes,different countries have different protection levels about personal data.Once data flows among different countries,even complete laws and regulations are hard to provide proper protection.As the earliest regional organization carrying out personal data protection,EU issued Directive 95/46/EC in 1995,which is a benchmark document in global data protection field and has created profound influence toward legislation in other countries and regions.Meanwhile,Directive95/46/EC adopts tightening approaches about personal data flowing to a third countries and takes adequate protection as the principle for this kind of circumstance.If the third country can't pass the identification of adequate protection,transborder flows of personal data mustn't be conducted.However,only a few countries can meet the requirements in practice.In order to better promote the transborder flows of personal data,EU and US signed Safe Harbor Agreement to promote its flow between them.Besides,EU also takes standard contractual clauses and binding corporate rules as appropriate safeguards measures to promote it,whereas there are still all sorts of different questions during implementation.Therefore,the author takes transborder flows of personal data in EU as the research object and conducts a comprehensive and complete explorative research.Apart from the introduction and conclusion,this article is divided into six chapters with main contents as follows:The first chapter mainly elaborates the basic content of EU data protection law andtransborder flows of personal data.It lays a foundation for later discussion through description about concepts of transborder flows of personal data,authorities and functions,the development and evolution of EU data protection law,legal sources of transborder flows of personal data in EU.The second chapter elaborates adequate protection,analyzes its connotation,its decision and the problems existing in practice.The third chapter discusses about the content of Safe Harbor Agreement.This part mainly analyzes the problems existing in transborder flows of personal data,between EU and US.Besides,through introducing and analyzing the Schrems case,it points out the influence of the judgement by European Union Court on transborder flows of personal data between EU and US.Finally,it analyzes the newly-agreed Privacy Shield Agreement.The fourth chapter firstly discusses standard contracts clauses,then takes comparative analysis about three different currently-used standard contracts clauses and points out their problems in practice.The fifth chapter analyzes binding corporate rules,elaborates its connotations,application and approval,implementation and supervision,points out their problems in practice.The sixth chapter is focused on the appraisal about transborder flows of personal data in EU and its inspiration on China.This part firstly combines with to-be effective Regulations General Data Protection Regulation to evaluate transborder flows of personal data in EU,then analyzes the status quo of transborder flows of personal data and points out its existing problems in China.Finally,it puts forward some suggestions about transborder flows of personal data in China.