The use of big data as a risk for individual self-determination and the implementation of competition law in the digital market - A comparative approach between the European Union and the United States of America

This paper aims at studying two main fundamental rights, namely, the rights to human dignity and to the protection of personal data which, throughout their analysis in the digital context, will be found to be affected by the use of new technologies and the mechanisms of digital economy. In order to carry out the said analysis the first two paragraphs will investigate the origins and the meaning of the right to human dignity in its sense of self-determination, and to privacy in its narrower notion of personal data protection and will try to demonstrate that both these rights that are currently recognised and protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the “Charter” or “CFR”) initially took origin from the studies of US scholars and from the interpretive activity of the Supreme Court of the United States (“SCotUS”). The third paragraph will briefly offer some observations on the comparison between the two legal systems of the EU and the US concerning privacy protection. The fourth paragraph will consider the framework of data driven economy which forms an important part of the digital economy and will particularly play an imperative role in the development of the EU digital single market as craved by the 2020 objectives set out by the European Commission, in order to increase commercial transactions inside and outside the EU economic area. The final paragraph will explore the possibility to apply competition law (at least, EU competition law – insofar as the EU single market is concerned) with the view to increase competition between firms operating in the digital context and in the meantime to reduce market power of the biggest digital firms. In the concluding paragraph, some remarks on the analogies and differences between the EU and the US legal systems will be made and some solutions to prevent the infringement of the right to self-determination will be suggested.