• GDPR History and Preamble
• GDPR Major Articles 17/18/20/30/32/33/35/37/45 and Article 83 – Schedule of Fines
• GDPR Enforcement and Penalties for Non-Compliance
• GDPR Table of Contents

GDPR History and Preamble

Title – Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation)

The text of the law as passed by the European Union starts with the following recital in the Preamble, Paragraph (1):

“The protection of natural persons in relation to the processing of personal data is a fundamental right. Article 8(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the ‘Charter’) and Article 16(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) provide that everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.”

The preamble concludes on page 31 after 173 detailed Paragraphs.  Then the text of the Regulation is provided on pages 32 to 88. The GDPR contains 11 Chapters and 99 Articles.

GDPR Major Articles 17/18/20/30/32/33/35/37/45 and Article 83 – Schedule of Fines

Article 17 – Right to Be Forgotten – controller has the obligation of erasure without unreasonable delay.

Articles 18 and 20 – Rights of Erasure and Portability – These provisions of the GDPR give individuals more control over their personal data including the right to transfer their data between service providers (“right to portability”), and deletion of their data (“right to erasure”).

Article 30 – Records of Processing – The GDPR requires implementation of data protection measures to protect against consumer data loss.

Article 32 – Requires pseudonymization and encryption of personal data by controllers.

Articles 33 – Supervisory Authority – requires notification of a Supervisory Authority (Art 51) within 72 hours of a data breach. All organizations, including small to medium-sized companies and large controllers must notify SAs of a personal data breach within 72 hours of learning of the breach and must provide specific details of the breach such as the nature of it and the approximate number of data subjects affected.

Articles 35 – Data Protection Impact Assessment – requires companies to perform Data Protection Impact Assessments to identify risks to consumer data and Data Protection Compliance Reviews to ensure those risks are addressed.

Article 37 – Data Protection Officers – certain companies must appoint data protection officers; they serve to advise companies about compliance with the regulation and act as a point of contact with Supervising Authorities.

Article 45 – Non-EU controller – extends data protection requirements to Third Country or non-EU country collectors of EU citizen personal data, and subjects them to the same requirements and penalties as EU based companies.

Article 83 – General Conditions for Imposing Administrative Fines

Paragraph 4. Infringements of the following provisions shall, in accordance with paragraph 2, be subject to administrative fines up to 10 000 000 EUR, or in the case of an undertaking, up to 2 % of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher: (a) the obligations of the controller and the processor pursuant to Articles 8, 11, 25 to 39 and 42 and 43; (b) the obligations of the certification body pursuant to Articles 42 and 43; (c) the obligations of the monitoring body pursuant to Article 41(4). 4.5.2016 L 119/82 Official Journal of the European Union EN 5.

Paragraph 5. Infringements of the following provisions shall, in accordance with paragraph 2, be subject to administrative fines up to 20 000 000 EUR, or in the case of an undertaking, up to 4 % of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher: (a) the basic principles for processing, including conditions for consent, pursuant to Articles 5, 6, 7 and 9; (b) the data subjects’ rights pursuant to Articles 12 to 22; (c) the transfers of personal data to a recipient in a third country or an international organization pursuant to Articles 44 to 49; (d) any obligations pursuant to Member State law adopted under Chapter IX; (e) non-compliance with an order or a temporary or definitive limitation on processing or the suspension of data flows by the supervisory authority pursuant to Article 58(2) or failure to provide access in violation of Article 58(1).

Paragraph 6. Non-compliance with an order by the supervisory authority as referred to in Article 58(2) shall, in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Article, be subject to administrative fines up to 20 000 000 EUR, or in the case of an undertaking, up to 4 % of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.

GDPR Enforcement and Penalties for Non-Compliance

In comparison to the former Data Protection Directive, the GDPR has increased penalties for non-compliance. Supervisory Authorities (SA) have more authority than in the previous legislation because the GDPR sets a standard across the EU for all companies that handle EU citizens’ personal data. A Supervisory Authority is defined in Article 4 paragraph 21 an independent public authority established pursuant to Article 51. SAs hold investigative and corrective powers and may issue warnings for noncompliance, perform audits to ensure compliance, require companies to make specified improvements by prescribed deadlines, order data to be erased, and block companies from transferring data to other countries. Data controllers and processors are subject to the SA powers and penalties.

The GDPR also allows SAs to issue larger fines than the prior Data Protection Directive. The SA may choose whether to impose their corrective powers with or without fines. For companies that fail to comply with certain GDPR requirements, as stated above from Article 83, fines may be up to 2% or 4% of total global annual turnover, or €10m or €20m, whichever is greater.

GDPR Table of Contents

Chapter 1: General Provisions

Article 1: Subject Matter and Object

Article 2: Material Scope

Article 3: Territorial Scope

Article 4: Definitions

Chapter 2: Principles

Article 5: Principles relating to personal data processing

Article 6: Lawfulness of processing

Article 7: Conditions for consent

Article 8: Conditions applicable to child’s consent in relation to information society services

Article 9: Processing of special categories of personal data

Article 10: Processing of data relating to criminal convictions and offences

Article 11: Processing which does not require identification

Chapter 3: Rights of the Data Subject

Section 1: Transparency and Modalities

Article 12: Transparent information, communication and modalities for the exercise of the rights of the data subject

Section 2: Information and Access to Data

Article 13: Information to be provided where personal data are collected from the data subject

Article 14: Information to be provided where personal data have not been obtained from the data subject

Article 15: Right of access by the data subject

Section 3: Rectification and Erasure

Article 16: Right to rectification

Article 17: Right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’)

Article 18: Right to restriction of processing

Article 19: Notification obligation regarding rectification or erasure of personal data or restriction of processing

Article 20: Right to data portability

Section 4: Right to object and automated individual decision making

Article 21: Right to object

Article 22: Automated individual decision-making, including profiling

Section 5: Restrictions

Article 23: Restrictions

Chapter 4: Controller and Processor

Section 1: General Obligations

Article 24: Responsibility of the controller

Article 25: Data protection by design and by default

Article 26: Joint controllers

Article 27: Representatives of controllers not established in the Union

Article 28: Processor

Article 29: Processing under the authority of the controller or processor

Article 30: Records of processing activities

Article 31: Cooperation with the supervisory authority

Section 2: Security of personal data

Article 32: Security of processing

Article 33: Notification of a personal data breach to the supervisory authority

Article 34: Communication of a personal data breach to the data subject

Section 3: Data protection impact assessment and prior consultation

Article 35: Data protection impact assessment

Article 36: Prior Consultation

Section 4: Data protection officer

Article 37: Designation of the data protection officer

Article 38: Position of the data protection officer

Article 39: Tasks of the data protection officer

Section 5: Codes of conduct and certification

Article 40: Codes of Conduct

Article 41: Monitoring of approved codes of conduct

Article 42: Certification

Article 43: Certification Bodies

Chapter 5: Transfer of personal data to third countries of international organizations

Article 44: General Principle for transfer

Article 45: Transfers of the basis of an adequacy decision

Article 46: Transfers subject to appropriate safeguards

Article 47: Binding corporate rules

Article 48: Transfers or disclosures not authorized by union law

Article 49: Derogations for specific situations

Article 50: International cooperation for the protection of personal data

Chapter 6: Independent Supervisory Authorities

Section 1: Independent status

Article 51: Supervisory Authority

Article 52: Independence

Article 53: General conditions for the members of the supervisory authority

Article 54: Rules on the establishment of the supervisory Authority

Section 2: Competence, Tasks, and Powers

Article 55: Competence

Article 56: Competence of the lead supervisory authority

Article 57: Tasks

Article 58: Powers

Article 59: Activity Reports

Chapter 7: Co-operation and Consistency

Section 1: Co-operation

Article 60: Cooperation between the lead supervisory authority and the other supervisory authorities concerned

Article 61: Mutual Assistance

Article 62: : Joint operations of supervisory authorities

Section 2: Consistency

Article 63: Consistency mechanism

Article 64: Opinion of the Board

Article 65: Dispute resolution by the Board

Article 66: Urgency Procedure

Article 67: Exchange of information

Section 3: European Data Protection Board

Article 68: European Data Protection Board

Article 69: Independence

Article 70: Tasks of the Board

Article 71: Reports

Article 72: Procedure

Article 73: Chair

Article 74: Tasks of the Chair

Article 75: Secretariat

Article 76: Confidentiality

Chapter 8: Remedies, Liability, and Sanctions

Article 77: Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

Article 78: Right to an effective judicial remedy against a supervisory authority

Article 79: Right to an effective judicial remedy against a controller or processor

Article 80: Representation of data subjects

Article 81: Suspension of proceedings

Article 82: Right to compensation and liability

Article 83: General conditions for imposing administrative fines

Article 84: Penalties

Chapter 9: Provisions relating to specific data processing situations

Article 85: Processing and freedom of expression and information

Article 86: Processing and public access to official documents

Article 87: Processing of the national identification number

Article 88: Processing in the context of employment

Article 89: Safeguards and derogations relating to processing for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes

Article 90: Obligations of secrecy

Article 91: Existing data protection rules of churches and religious associations

Chapter 10: Delegated Acts and Implementing Acts

Article 92: Exercise of the delegation

Article 93: Committee procedure

Chapter 11: Final provisions

Article 94: Repeal of Directive 95/46/EC

Article 95: Relationship with Directive 2002/58/EC

Article 96: Relationship with previously concluded Agreements

Article 97: Commission Reports

Article 98: Review of other union legal acts on data protection

Article 99: Entry into force and application