The accountability culture in its european union dress: Sticks but no carrots to make the proposed data protection regulation work

Having largely in influenced governance within the public sector, the concept of accountability is being lately transferred in the private sector too. One might even speak of a culture of accountability, including specific patterns, traits, and products that —although initially emerged in the public sector— are now expanding, increasingly defining governance in the private sector. In the subsequent sections we first demonstrate how accountability is embodied in the proposed data protection framework (section 1 & 2). The discussion elaborates further on why and how accountability appears to be one of the distinct modalities of our time (section 3), paving the ground for a more critical analysis on the way the accountability concept is introduced in the proposed EU regulation (section 4 & 5).