Aligning data protection rights with competition law remedies? The GDPR right to data portability

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduces a right to data portability in the EU legal order. This novel right has no direct equivalent in EU Member States, or internationally. Data portability bears many of the trappings of a competition law remedy: it has the potential to reduce barriers to entry; to stimulate innovation; and, to lower switching costs for individuals. For this reason, the right to data portability is often attributed a competition-based rationale in addition to its data protection objective. Yet, as this paper shall demonstrate, the GDPR right to data portability can be differentiated from a competition law remedy in terms of both its scope and its objectives. These differences in terms of scope and normative logic can lead to conflicting interpretations and visions of the right to data portability. This paper argues that in case of such conflict the interpretation of the GDPR right to data portability ought to be decoupled from the logic and constraints of competition law and instead viewed within its data protection law context as an instrument for individual control over personal data.