25 November 2025
Grey’s Autonomy
Amid the weakening of constitutional safeguards in Slovakia, the recently amended Statute on Healthcare now allows a person authorised to perform clerical activities to enter an institutional health care facility without any restrictions. At face value, the Statute aims to ensure the patient’s right to spiritual care. Crucially, however, it omits any reference to a patient’s request and consent – a silence that sits at the centre of this post. Article 9 ECHR does not tolerate that kind of vagueness in such a vulnerable environment. Henceforth, the Statute must directly state that access is based on explicit patient consent. Continue reading >>
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07 July 2023
Competition law as a powerful tool for effective enforcement of the GDPR
It looks like a good week for data protection. On Tuesday, the Commission presented a new proposal for a Regulation on additional procedural rules for the GDPR, and a few hours later, the ECJ published its decision C-252/21 on Meta Platforms v Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office). While the Commission's proposal to improve enforcement in cross-border cases should probably be taken with a pinch of salt, the ECJ ruled on some things with remarkable clarity. The first reactions to the ruling were quite surprising; few had expected the ECJ to take such a clear stance against Meta's targeted advertising business model. It does however represent a consistent interpretation of the GDPR in the tradition and understanding of power-limiting data protection. Continue reading >>
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