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From a comparative perspective the Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique grand-scale life experience: nearly all countries have been confronted with a similar issue, that of quickly fighting the pandemic, balancing individual health with the sustainability of the national health system, and juggling economic imperatives with the duty to care for the most vulnerable individuals in society. Access and use of data are key to this difficult balancing exercise. One question arises: is the Covid-19 pandemic conducive to developing shared legal strategies or does it reinforce cultural legal features when it comes to data protection?
Blogdroiteuropeen asked experts in data protection to reflect on key developments in their national systems. No definitive answer is possible as Covid-19 is not over yet. However, this preliminary information leads to the identification of six trends underlying the Covid-19 crisis and its impact on data protection. First, all countries were not equal before the pandemic due to differences in their factual and legal backgrounds. Secondly, constitutional techniques proved resilient to a large extent in general and in particular when it comes to data protection. Thirdly, the effectiveness of data protection legislation is connected to its embeddedness in the wider legal context. Fourthly, tracking the spread of Covid-19 through tracing apps may turn out to be a unicorn defeated by data protection even though different technologies have been attempted. Fifthly, aggregation of data or collective harvesting of data in some form has been implemented to very different extents, provided some data protection requirements are met. This leads to the final trend: the ever more articulated pressure on the European Union to decide how far it wants to reclaim its digital sovereignty, and what this would entail concretely. As legal systems may have to cope with the long-term consequences of Covid-19 all over the world it may be useful to take stock of these emerging trends before designing any grand scheme for post-Covid-19 society.
Against a background of extensive literature examining how digital platforms are regulated through ‘soft’ mechanisms, this paper analyses the ‘hard law’ techniques, such as sanctions, which are also very much used on digital platforms to police undesirable behaviours.
It illustrates the use of these sanctions, suggesting that it is possible to find three different categories of sanctions: sanctions that find their source in hard (international and domestic) law, sanctions that find their source in digital platforms’ own normative production, and sanctions used in the course of disputes. Platform operators can have an intense power of norm-setting and sanctions, with a tendency to concentrate power within themselves or with unclear arrangements for dividing it across different entities. This can deeply affect individual freedoms. This paper suggests that the ways in which the power to set, decide and enforce sanctions is exercised in the digital space transform the public–private divide: the allocation of roles between sovereign public bodies and free private actors is reshaped to become ‘hybrid’ when it comes to enforcing rules and monitoring compliance through a wide range of sanctions on digital platforms. This paper frames the legitimacy questions arising from sanctions and suggests that the public–private divide may have to be bridged in order to locate a possible source of legitimacy. A future framework for assessing how platform operators set norms and ensure compliance through sanctions needs to start from individual users to see how best to protect their freedom when checks and balances around platforms’ powers and sanctions are developed. These individual users are the ones who suffer from the economic, social and reputational consequences of sanctions in both the digital world and the physical world.
En prenant pour repère le droit administratif français, cet ouvrage propose une approche comparée des droits des administrations de cinq États européens : l’Allemagne, l’Espagne, l’Italie, les Pays-Bas et le Royaume-Uni.
Une telle exploration horizontale a paru nécessaire, à l’heure où la doctrine européenne reconnaît l’émergence d’un droit administratif européen et que l’influence croissante des droits de l’Union européenne et du Conseil de l’Europe sur le droit de leurs États membres semble bien identifiée. L’intensité des échanges, notamment économiques, sociaux et culturels, se renforce entre ceuxci et impose une meilleure connaissance et compréhension réciproque. C’est particulièrement vrai pour le droit administratif dont « l’intelligence interne » – pour reprendre l’expression de Jean Rivero – se comprend à l’aune des influences croisées (européennes, transnationales, etc.) comme à celles des spécificités de l’histoire et des traditions juridiques nationales.
C’est afin de rendre compte de la richesse de cette construction que ce manuel offre une présentation claire des concepts, des techniques et des régimes juridiques qui articulent le droit des administrations dans les cinq Étatstypes étudiés. Il donne aux étudiants, praticiens et universitaires, les outils pédagogiques et analytiques afin de mieux comprendre les mutations actuelles des droits publics nationaux et européens.