Cullen International, together with the universities of Namur and Leuven, organises a seminar on data portability at the crossroads of data protection and competition policy.Right to data portability as a means to enhance consumer control over dataIn its proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation, the European Commission has introduced a right to data portability, i.e. the right for an EU citizen to transfer his/her personal data from one electronic processing system to another, without being prevented from doing so by the controller (art. 18 of the Commission’s proposal).The newly proposed right has attracted a lot of attention and has been under review by the European Parliament and the Council.The event will seek to shed some light on this question both from a theoretical and an industry perspective.The seminar will examine the following issues:What does the right to data portability entail?How should the right to data portability be implemented by online service providers?Will data portability be sufficient to protect the consumer’s interest in the digital economy?To what extent can data portability promote innovation in and competitiveness of the EU?Is regulation to enable data portability necessary?We will examine the potential role of competition policy in facilitating data portability and redressing consumer lock-in.The seminar will explore the following issues:In what way may data portability be enforced under competition law (i.e. without the need for specific regulation)?Would data portability bring certain risks to privacy, e.g. data leaks?How can the interests of businesses and consumers be balanced?To what extent do online service providers already facilitate data portability?