It’s time. Leveraging the GDPR to Shift the Balance Towards Research-friendly EU Data Spaces

A differentiation of research-based data protection regimes is proposed in light of the distinction between merely for profit and public interest-oriented research, respectively supporting a differentiated level of data subjects’ control prerogatives and data controllers’ mobilization ease. The study demonstrates how the existence of differential data protection regimes in European data protection law has a corresponding differentiated impact enabling data sharing practices of personal data and in particular of special categories of data. Differential data protection regimes impact differently on contractual freedom to share and aggregate personal data, which is the primary pillar of the creation of “common data spaces” under the latest European strategy for data and under the Data Governance Act.