About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

2 Vienna Online J. on Int'l Const. L. 196 (2008)
The Protection of Personal Data by the Austrian Constitutional Court

handle is hein.journals/vioincl2 and id is 193 raw text is: * CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS IN AUSTRIA Andreas Lehner The Protection of Personal Data by the Austrian Constitutional Court The protection of personal data by law has a rather long tradition in Austria. Soon after some German federal states implemented the first data protection laws of the world, Austria followed suit in 1978 with its Federal Act concerning the Protection of Personal Data1. Part of this Act was a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to secrecy of personal information. Thus, years before the German Federal Constitutional Court established a Right to informational self- determination in 19832, the Austrian citizens had an explicit constitutional right to data protection. As the Austrian Constitutional Court is empowered to scrutinize the constitutionality of laws and acts of authorities and to rescind unconstitutional acts, the right to data protection has been subject to the Constitutional Court's jurisdiction from that moment on. The right to data protection has to be respected by citizens as well as by the state. Nevertheless, citizens violating the fundamental right may not be sued at the Constitutional Court but before the civil courts. The adoption of Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of personal data3 in 1995 obliged the Austrian legislator to adapt the national provisions according to the European law, which resulted in the revision of the Federal Act concerning the Protection of Personal Data in 20004, consisting of constitutional provisions concerning the right to data protection and further non-constitutional provisions concerning the processing and sharing of personal data. Furthermore, many Acts related to data protection, which regulate matters for which the processing of personal data is a necessity, have been amended or supplemented with data protection provisions since then. Even though structure and substance of the national Data Protection Act complies in most aspects with the European directive and most of the non- constitutional provisions respect the constitutional requirements arising from the constitutional right to data protection, there were and still are some deviations. There are different ways the Constitutional Court has to deal with these 1 Federal Law Gazette No. 565/1978. 2 Volkszchlungsurteil BVerfGE 65, 1. 3 Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, Official Journal of the European Union of October 25, 1995, Vol. L 281, pp 31-50. 4 Federal Law Gazette No. 165/1999. www*icl-ou3/2008mV196 3/2008, 196

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most