Data protection and digital trade law are intertwined and should not be treated as separate entities, requiring a regulatory interface to govern cross-border data flows.
Author
Vandana Gyanchandani, Lecturer, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India
Summary
The paper provides three specific arguments in support of the two key claims to promote an interface between data protection and digital trade law. It engages in the current academic debate among scholars to understand the role of digital trade law in coordinating the regulatory thicket of national data protection regulations (NDPRs)among states. In pursuance, it proposes a rebuttal to the critique that digital trade law is fundamentally ill-suited to engage in data protection policy debates. The paper argues that data protection and digital trade law cannot remain in separate silos as they both are fundamentally intertwined with the governance of cross-border flow of personal data. Data protection issues should form an indispensable consideration in the context of digital trade liberalisation and vice versa. The paper concludes that the standards regime in international trade law can be considered as a blueprint for the necessary regulatory interface between data protection and digital trade.
Published in: Journal of Data Protection and Privacy
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