What is the European Union (EU) Data Protection Directive?

The European Union (EU) Data Protection Directive is a law enacted in 1995 which regulates the collection, storage, and use of personal data within the European Union (EU). The Directive is the predecessor to the more comprehensive General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was implemented in 2018. The EU Data Protection Directive established the legal framework for the protection of personal data throughout the EU. It required member states of the EU to implement laws that prohibited the collection of personal data without the consent of the data subject, and restricted the ways in which personal data could be used. The Directive applied to everyone processing personal data within the EU. It required data controllers to ensure that personal data is collected for specified and legitimate purposes, and not processed in any way that would prejudice the rights of the data subject. It also mandated the appointment of data protection officers and the implementation of security measures to protect personal data from unauthorized use. Though the GDPR superseded the EU Data Protection Directive in 2018, the Directive remains an integral part of the legal landscape for data protection in Europe. It laid the foundation for rigid data security laws in Massachusetts and other EU states, and its tenets remain a cornerstone of data security law in the region.

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What is the European Union (EU) Data Protection Directive?

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