Tracing the Expansive Effect of the GDPR in the Third Countries. The Cases of Russia, Ukraine and China

This research aims at analyzing the “expansive effect” of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in three non-EU case countries, i.e. Russia, Ukraine and China, to understand how the GDPR provisions affect, or are affected by, the interaction with three non-EU legal systems. The recently adopted GDPR, being a set of comprehensive data processing rules and penalties for violating data protection regulations, has set a very high standard for the other states in developing their own data protection regulations, but at the same time, the GDPR has brought about a wide range of compliance challenges. Due to the extraterritorial character of the General Data Protection Regulation, these challenges regard not only the EU member states but also any organisations around the world engaged in professional or commercial relations with the European Union. Therefore, there is a gap in understanding the interplay between the newly-built European data protection system and the legal systems outside the EU, which this research seeks to cover.