Poltical Economy of European Integration M.A.
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- Accountability, Data Protection Authority, European Union, Fines, General Data Protection Regulation, Multi-level governance. (1)
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Institute
Food waste or loss is generated within the entire food supply chain from agricultural production to the household level. The level of food waste in the overall food supply chain has negative economic, environmental, and social impacts. The EU has designed and initiated multiple policies targeting and including many different policy areas to tackle food waste. Therefore, this study examines challenges and obstacles facing existing EU food waste policies and initiatives, highlighting the reasons behind the inefficiencies in food waste governance from legislative and food regime theory perspectives. After carefully analyzing current EU legislation related to food waste, the findings indicate that the existing legislation and actions to tackle food waste are disconnected and irregular, such that no agreed comprehensive and established approaches are at the EU level. Existing interventions have hardly addressed the food waste problem directly. While prioritizing the donation of food surplus and food waste hierarchy, the role of market power and corporations and structural explanations in the global food industry have been missing. Therefore, there is a need for a holistic approach to address the issue and an integrated policy framework to tackle food waste.
I. Abstract
It has been three years now since the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became enforceable, which highlighted the end of an era with lack of enforcement in the field of data protection provisions (Albrecht, 2016, p. 287). The EU General Data Protection Regulation, which was effective from 25 of May 2018, has replaced the outdated European Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC). This new regime has brought new legal rights to data subjects, while extending the scope of the responsibilities for controllers and processors. As personal data progressively embodies an important new class of economic asset for organisations, GDPR has significantly expanded the enforcement powers of the Data Protection Authorities. Consequently, it has also enhanced the regulators enforcement rights to impose fines, which may go up to €20 million or, if higher, 4% of an organisation’s annual global turnover (DLA Piper, 2018, p. 5). GDPR has actually replaced a regime under which fines for a data breach were limited and enforcement actions were uncommon. Through this new regime the regulatory environment across European Member States has undoubtedly shifted and regulators have greater powers of enforcement (DLA Piper, 2018, p.3). The fact that the important role of the strict application of the accountability principle was assigned to the national Data Protection Authorities (Albrecht, 2016, p. 288) and the function to exercise corrective powers in case of violation of the Regulation’s provisions has made the topic of fines and other sanctions an issue that has had the attention of all the companies, not only in Europe but worldwide.
Having this context and the importance of the topic in mind, the main focus of the thesis is related to how DPAs’ work on the EU multilevel governance system contribute on the accurate and consistent application of the GDPR. Also, analysing fines as one of the enforcement instruments in the system ruled from the EU principle of accountability is the other central point of the research. Additionally, it is known that we live in times when technology has been frequently developing and where digitalization is progressing in a high scale. This is translated into the flow of personal data (but not only) inside, across borders and IT systems of the EU. Such data flows so easily through IT systems and can as easily be misused from the subject that is processing those data. In order to guarantee, empower the individuals and give them control over their personal data the EU legislator has also detailed the penalties that occur when data that is processed is not in accordance with GDPR. In order to avoid such situation and to correct the cases where violations toward EU data protection law are present, special attention is given to the fines (Article 83-84 GDPR), as a key sanction tool. Therefore, the thesis is concentrated on administrative fines for data protection violations and their issues as well as on the limitations of such a sanction in the system of accountability in Europe. It’s aim is analysing the fines problematic and situations that Member States have faced so far in practice.
Keywords:
Accountability, Data Protection Authority, European Union, Fines, General Data Protection Regulation, Multi-level governance.
This paper investigates the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the catching-up level and global value chain (GVC) integration of new European member states (NMS), considering the manufacturing sector using data of different time spans within the 1990 – 2019 period. After analyzing the differences in FDI inflows in NMS, eight of them are chosen and focused in the study including Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania. Poland and Slovenia are discussed as case studies and evidences of GVC integration. The findings revealed that the inflows of FDI have limited impact and contribution to the improvement of the host economy’s manufacturing industry, economic development and GVC integration. Indeed, FDI mostly relates to product and process upgrading but not functional upgrading. Therefore, the development gap between the NMS and core European economies is not decreased over time. With regards to utilize FDI for economic upgrading, GVC integration, and catching-up, this research stresses the importance of host economies’ absorptive capability and government intervention through industrial policy.