Data Protection and Conflict-of-laws: A Challenging Relationship

The present article aims to address issues of applicable law in data protection litigation, dealing notably with the questions of possibility of agreements on applicable law, the questions of applicable law if the controller is situated within the EU and the questions of extraterritorial application of EU data protection law if the controller is established outside of the EU. In particular with regard to the issue of agreements on applicable data protection law, where general rules on applicable law with regard to contracts or torts are different than in data protection law, the issue will be addressed whether the provisions of general EU regulations on applicable law bear any significance for the field of data protection.