Description

Towards Fair Data Sharing in View of the European Health Data Space: A Rights-Based Approach for Citizens

The European Health Data Space (EHDS) aims to enable large-scale cross-border data sharing for research, innovation, and artificial intelligence, but raises questions about how citizens’ rights are protected within this new regulatory framework. As the EHDS expands data access across the EU, existing power asymmetries between data subjects and data users risk being intensified. This dissertation examines the EHDS through the lens of the fairness principle, a cornerstone of EU data protection law, arguing that its application is essential to balancing competing interests and ensuring that citizens’ rights are protected in practice. The analysis shows that fairness provides a normative framework that can help identify where rights may be unevenly protected as the secondary use of health data is scaled up through the EHDS.