Trends towards stronger data protection: the right to be forgotten in the European Union

Access to knowledge is crucial for the flourishing of knowledge economies, the economies of the future. Information resources and data are major knowledge assets, generally and especially in the case of scholarly communications. This paper illustrates the significance of an alternative legislative and/or soft law framework on the regulation specifically of the development and information access within the European Union. By its dimension, ambition and complexity, the Lisbon Strategy - also known as the Lisbon Agenda or Lisbon Process - constitutes one of the most far-reaching political initiatives to have been embarked upon over the last decade. At the Lisbon European Council in 2000 the European Union set itself a new strategic goal for 2010, a goal which consisted of a global and long-term agenda of reform and modernisation. The subject matter of this paper is grounded on the key question of the appropriate equilibrium between copyright law and data protection in relation to informational resources, among European institutions, according to European regulations and recommendations. Taking everything into account, it is undeniable fact that current European legislation and its framework concerning data protection should be shifted. In particular, such a framework might in its turn help however little towards securing the widest possible protection of human rights for European people.