Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on data protection in the European Union.

In the digital era, data is the new currency and data protection an increasingly important social, legal and political matter for the EU.

But how well protected is our data and what challenges lie ahead?

Stay with us.

Whether it is geographical information, statistics, weather records, research data, transport

data, energy consumption data, commercial data, health data, or personal

data we share in social media and connected devices, the volume of data being produced worldwide

is growing exponentially.

And access to such data is power.

Power to influence decisions on trivial things, such as where to spend our next holiday,

and on important things, such as which party to vote for in a political election.

Truth is that artificial intelligence, which relies on the mass collection of data to operate,

poses fundamental challenges to privacy and personal data protection, as well as the discrimination risk, and citizens know it.

Yes, they do. That's why eight in every ten Europeans, according to a Eurobarometer survey,

admit to feeling concerned or very concerned about the control of their personal data provided online.

So what does the EU do to protect our data?

The right to privacy and to protection of personal data are both enshrined in the Charter

of Fundamental Rights of the EU and the EU treaties.

The entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 give the Charter the same legal value as the treaties, providing a stronger basis for a more effective and comprehensive data protection regime in the EU.

Yes, Europe needed to deal with the challenges of an increasingly digital world.

So, in 2012, the Commission launched an ambitious reform to modernise

its data protection rules and make them fit for the digital era. The reform resulted in the adoption

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