Co-regulation or self-regulation by public and private bodies - the case of data protection 

Published in: Freundesgabe für Alfred Büllesbach 2002 Umbruch von Regelungssystemen in der Informationgesellschaft. ISBN 3-00-009813-5

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Author: Peter J. Hustinx

In his whole career, Alfred Büllesbach has demonstrated a great capacity for combining or switching from different disciplines, social sectors, national environments and so on. In most of these situations, he not only demonstrated great skills in the subject at hand, but above all impressed observers witha unique combination of boundless energy and catching enthusiasm which has left its marks on all those who crossed his path. This seems to provide the ideal inspiration for a reflexion on one of the areas he has been active in - i.e.data protection from an international and cross-sectoral point of view, but with a solid base. In this case, the solid base is in the Netherlands and the question was how to develop a combination of means to improve the effectiveness of data protection.

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This article sets out to present the main lines of the constitutional framework within which data protectionor the protection of personal data has developed in the Netherlands. Against this background, it discusses the reasons why and the different ways in which self-regulation has played its role in that development. The article then focuses on the structure of the Data Protection Act and on the ways in which the Data Protection Authority has interpreted its role in that context and is planning to proceed in the near future.