The focus of this study is the transfer of personal data to third countries or international organizations according to EU Regulation No. 679/2016 (GDPR) on the protection of personal data. The primary goal of this Regulation concerning data transfer to third countries is to ensure that the subject’s rights and freedoms are safeguarded at the same level as provided by GDPR. According to GDPR, before any transfer to a third country or international organization, it must first be ascertained whether the European Commission has established that a third country ensures an adequate level of protection. Regarding personal data protection in the third state, the Court of Justice of the European Union has intervened on different occasions. In the last decision, in 2020, the Court declared invalid the European Commission’s Decision No. 2016/1250 on the adequacy of the protection provided by the EU-US Privacy Shield (CJEU, Schrems II, 2020, July 16) because it does not provide effective and enforceable rights for personal data subjects in cases of interference. According to the Court of Justice of the European Union, the US does not guarantee an “essentially equivalent” level of protection to that provided by the European Union under Article 45(1) GDPR, read in conjunction with Articles 7, 8, and 47 of the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, which guarantee respect for private and family life, personal data protection, and the right to effective judicial protection.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the issues related to health emergency management have raised concerns about fundamental rights protection. One of the most complex and contentious issues in doctrine and jurisprudence is the introduction of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for specified categories of subjects, such as healthcare workers and individuals of a specific age range, as occurred in Italy. The debate in Italy over the mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requirement focuses on whether this obligation interferes with the individual’s fundamental right to free self-determination as guaranteed by Article 32 of the Italian Constitution. In jurisprudence and doctrine, conflicting opinions are noted concerning this topic. Part of the doctrine argue that mandatory COVID-19 vaccination compromises some fundamental rights guaranteed by the Italian Constitution, such as the right to free self-determination and respect for human dignity. Other opinions find the basis of the vaccination in the community’s best interests, citing Article 32 of the Italian Constitution, which allows for the imposition of compulsory health treatment to safeguard citizens’ health. In this regard, the issue of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requires a reflection on the balance of two fundamental rights: the individual right to free self-determination and the community’s interest in terms of protecting public health.
The principle of non-refoulement provided for by Article 33 of the Geneva Convention constitutes a principle of international law with a significant role in the protection of human rights. This principle has been confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights, which has affirmed the state's responsibility for returning an asylum-seeker to a country where he risks being subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment or torture, in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Considering this reasoning, in the case of Hirsi Jamaa and others v. Italy, the European Court of Human Rights found the Italian State responsible for violating Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 for the collective refoulement of migrants without a procedure for assessing their individual situation in a state where they could face inhuman and degrading treatment, as well as for violating Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as the applicants had been denied the opportunity to appeal before the expulsion measure was carried out. Recently, the European Court of Human Rights' orientation has changed since, in the case of N.D. and N.T. v. Spain, the Court excluded the violation of both Article 4 of the 4th Protocol and Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights, stating that the collective rejections were due to the “applicants' own conduct”. This decision entails many perplexities regarding the protection of human rights. Received: 24 January 2022 / Accepted: 19 March 2022 / Published: 5 May 2022
The numerous amendments to the Albanian Criminal Code introduced over the years have continuously toughened penalties for criminal offences, raising doubts about the legislator's adherence to the proportionality principle. This issue has aroused an interest in treating proportionality as a fundamental principle of criminal law, particularly in guiding the legislator in determining appropriate punishments for criminal offences. Doctrine and jurisprudence constantly emphasize that disproportional sanctions, on the one hand, affect the re-educational and re-socialization processes, and on the other hand, they affect the discretion of the judge who, during the process of individualization of punishment, must adapt the penalty to the social danger of the criminal offence. The Albanian Constitutional Court's jurisprudence has addressed proportionality issues in a significant judgment that opened the possibility of control over the legislator's political discretion. In this regard, the Albanian Constitutional Court considered some provisions of the Criminal Code in breach of Article 17 of the Constitution because the punishment provided for the criminal offence was disproportionate, affecting in this way the re-educational process of the perpetrator. On this occasion, the Court stated that the penalty is determined by weighing the social danger of the crime and the perpetrator's level of culpability. Furthermore, the Court considered that since criminal punishment restricts fundamental rights, it should be limited to those actions or omissions that, according to the principle of proportionality, are comparable in importance to the values they safeguard. Received: 6 May 2022 / Accepted: 29 June 2022 / Published: 5 July 2022
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