Читать книгу Privacy and Data Protection based on the GDPR - Leo Besemer - Страница 23

A “regulation” is a binding legislative act with a general application. It must be applied in its entirety across the EU and is directly applicable law in every Member State⁴. The general application relates to the objective and abstract description of the rules laid down in a regulation. “Directly applicable” means that a regulation as such has a legal right and cannot be transposed into national law. A transposition could lead to differences between the substantive meaning of a regulation and the national legislation, thus losing the effectiveness of the instrument. In practice, implementing measures must often be taken by the Member States in order to give full effect to a regulation. A Member State can only derogate from the provisions of a regulation if this is stated in the regulation. European law therefore supersedes Member State law.

In the case of the GDPR there are quite a number of articles where Member States can deviate from the GDPR, either to set the requirements even stricter, or to widen the scope of the law. A number of these topics are listed in GDPR Article 23.

The GDPR is “text with EEA Relevance”, as the subtitle indicates. This means that it does not apply to the EU Member States alone, but it applies to all countries within the European Economic Area (EEA). The EEA includes all EU Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It allows them to be part of the EU’s single market.