Protection of personal data in European digital single market

As a result of developments in information and communication technologies and the increasing use of internet, digital technologies have reached, changed and rearrenged our economic, social, cultural and political areas of our lives. Because of these irreversible developments that occured in various areas of human life, many transaction, such as banking to health services, social media usage, commercial transactions, have become possible through digital networks. Developments especially in e-commerce increase the share of digital markets in the world economy day after day. However, emerging global digital markets and all kind of online transactions have benefits like easing people's lives by saving time and Money, but also have brought treats to the data security. Thus, the increase in the number and diversity of personal data and data mobility recorded during the digital transactions, also increased the capacity of these data to be accessed and processed by third parties in different ways and purposes. This could make it difficult for the data subject to control its personal data that protected in the context of fundamental Rights and freedoms, and as a result might cause Fundamental Rights violations as well as material and moral losses. Despite these adversities, European Union could not set aside the share that it could get from the digital world, especially from the emerging digital economy. The governments, institutions and organizations that could not exists in the digital World, would also not be able to survive economically in the future. By the conscious of these, the idea of better protection of personal data has not fallen from the European Union's agenda since the 2000's. With the aim of protecting the Fundamental Rights and freedoms, which the moral roots of the European Union are based on, against the developing technologies, within the current and harmonized Union laws; and also with the aim of gaining the share that it deserves from the digital economy, which increases its own share in total trade day by day; and maintaining its competitive advantage over its competitors; and completing the establishment of the European digital single market, European Union makes various legal arrangements regarding personal data protection. The European Union General Data Protection Regulation that came into force in 2018, is an important step forward in this direction. The importance of the personal data protection in the new world order that results from the digital revolution and the contribution of the legal arrangements regarding data protection to the establishment of the European digital single market would be examined in this study. Keywords: Personal data protection, European Union General Data Protection Regulation, pandemic, Lisbon Strategy, Europe 2020 Strategy, digital economy, Digital Agenda, digital market, European digital single market, globalization.