Uruguay Starts Convention 108's Global Journey with Accession: Toward a Global Privacy Treaty?

Abstract

The Council of Europe has started in Uruguay data protection Convention 108’s long march toward becoming the world’s only data privacy treaty. On 12 April 2013 it announced that Uruguay's accession to Convention 108 (and to its Additional Protocol) was complete, and will enter into force in respect of Uruguay on 1 August 2013, making it the 45th state to become a party to the convention, and the first non-European party. Morocco has also been invited to accede.

This article analyses how much we know – and still do not know – about the accession process following the Uruguay accession, and the steps taken so far in the Morocco accession. It concludes that fourteen implications can be drawn to date, while the accession process is still evolving. Some problems are inherent in the lack of a complete fit between the Convention and its Additional Protocol, and ambiguities inherent in Article 23 dealing with non-European accessions. But no obviously faulty decisions have yet been made which would lower the standards of the Convention, and thus endanger its future.

Keywords: Council of Europe, Convention 108, data protection, privacy, international agreements, international trade