Data Protection in International Trade Law
José Augusto Fontoura Costa
1 Introduction
Data protection is often regarded as an issue pertaining to the field of human rights
and, particularly, privacy. However, the effective implementation of measures on the
issue may have very significant impacts on worldwide flows of information and,
therewith, on wealth. Consequently, it is important to take the relations between
international trade and data protection into account, in order to better understand the
sometimes unstable balance between the reliance of persons involved in international transactions and the freedom of data flows.
This report presents a panoramic picture of the provisions on personal data
protection in trade agreements. After a brief conceptual discussion on the relevance
of the protection of privacy to international trade of goods and services (Sects. 2–4),
it presents a study of the provisions in WTO law (Sect. 5) and the 75 regional trade
agreements which hold norms on electronic commerce and are registered in the
multilateral system (Sects. 6–8).
Considering that the WTO system is almost universal and that the multilateral
system covers a wide array of trade transactions, the report sets its basis on the
Regional Trade Agreement Information System, particularly the search in WTO
website by “topics covered” in the page http://rtais.wto.org/UI/PublicSearchByCr.
aspx, consulted in the period from January 10–31, 2018.
The report is focused on the documents found under the search reference “ecommerce”. Nevertheless, the presence of a chapter, annex or section in these
agreements on “data protection” or similar expressions is also noticed and analysed
in Sect. 6. Since the international liberalisation of financial services is also important
to data protection, particularly due to provisions on (a) the free transfer and
processing of data and (b) the domestic regulations on protection of confidential
J. A. F. Costa (*)
University of São Paulo, Law Faculty, São Paulo, Brazil
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
D. Moura Vicente, S. de Vasconcelos Casimiro (eds.), Data Protection in the
Internet, Ius Comparatum – Global Studies in Comparative Law 38,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28049-9_19
479
José Augusto Fontoura Costa
1 Introduction
Data protection is often regarded as an issue pertaining to the field of human rights
and, particularly, privacy. However, the effective implementation of measures on the
issue may have very significant impacts on worldwide flows of information and,
therewith, on wealth. Consequently, it is important to take the relations between
international trade and data protection into account, in order to better understand the
sometimes unstable balance between the reliance of persons involved in international transactions and the freedom of data flows.
This report presents a panoramic picture of the provisions on personal data
protection in trade agreements. After a brief conceptual discussion on the relevance
of the protection of privacy to international trade of goods and services (Sects. 2–4),
it presents a study of the provisions in WTO law (Sect. 5) and the 75 regional trade
agreements which hold norms on electronic commerce and are registered in the
multilateral system (Sects. 6–8).
Considering that the WTO system is almost universal and that the multilateral
system covers a wide array of trade transactions, the report sets its basis on the
Regional Trade Agreement Information System, particularly the search in WTO
website by “topics covered” in the page http://rtais.wto.org/UI/PublicSearchByCr.
aspx, consulted in the period from January 10–31, 2018.
The report is focused on the documents found under the search reference “ecommerce”. Nevertheless, the presence of a chapter, annex or section in these
agreements on “data protection” or similar expressions is also noticed and analysed
in Sect. 6. Since the international liberalisation of financial services is also important
to data protection, particularly due to provisions on (a) the free transfer and
processing of data and (b) the domestic regulations on protection of confidential
J. A. F. Costa (*)
University of São Paulo, Law Faculty, São Paulo, Brazil
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
D. Moura Vicente, S. de Vasconcelos Casimiro (eds.), Data Protection in the
Internet, Ius Comparatum – Global Studies in Comparative Law 38,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28049-9_19
479