In his article in the *Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik*, Dr Ole Schröder examines the question of whether, and to what extent, the GDPR and the Federal Data Protection Act apply to the German Bundestag.
The article addresses a complex intersection of constitutional and data protection law: the Bundestag is part of the state structure, yet at the same time it is a forum for parliamentary decision-making, political communication and the democratic exercise of mandate. This gives rise to specific questions regarding the application of general data protection requirements.
The article classifies the activities of parliament in terms of data protection law and demonstrates that the processing of personal data within the parliamentary sphere cannot simply be equated with traditional administrative procedures. Particularly in the case of Members of Parliament, parliamentary groups, committees and the Bundestag administration, various questions arise regarding responsibility, the legal basis and the scope of data protection oversight.
This publication is therefore an important contribution to the debate on data protection in a democratic constitutional state. It makes it clear that data protection also plays a central role in the parliamentary sphere, but must at the same time be reconciled with the proper functioning of parliament and the free exercise of parliamentary mandates.