The Application of the GDPR in Archives - with Special Attention on the Documents of the Totalitarian Political Systems

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adopted and validated by the European Union and became effected in 2016, has been applied in practice from 2018. The GDPR has brought radical changes to the way European citizens’ personal data is processed and protected. The new institution introduced by the regulation, the “right to be forgotten” has become an important guarantee of citizens’ right to the self-determination of information. At the same time, the archives that preserve the national memory of the countries of the Union, especially the archives dealing with pre-1990 intelligence records – in accordance with the standpoints of the EU – see the preservation of these records and the confrontation with the past as a guarantee of processing the traumas of the period. In the fall of 2018, the Historical Archives organized an international workshop on the role of the archives preserving the records of the totalitarian regimes in the changed data protection environment. We have compiled this volume from the studies based on the presentations given at the conference, all of which take a different approach by examining the theoretical issues and practical solutions of archiving personal data.