THE CIVIL-LAW NATURE OF CONSENT TO THE PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA UNDER THE LAW OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN: A DOCTRINAL ANALYSIS AND DE LEGE FERENDA PROPOSALS

The subject of this study is the declaration of will of a natural person intended to grant another party the right to collect, store and use information enabling the identification of that person. The topic covers the theoretical and practical aspects of classifying this declaration of will within the civil law system. The relevance is determined by the accelerated digitalisation of the economy and public administration, which has multiplied the number of personal data processing operations, and by the absence of an established doctrinal concept of the legal nature of the institution under consideration. The aim is to classify this declaration of will as a type of civil law transaction, determine the conditions for its validity, and develop proposals for improving the legislation. The problem is that the applicable civil legislation does not classify this declaration of will as a transaction, does not establish criteria for its voluntariness, does not regulate the legal capacity of minors when giving it, and does not provide an effective mechanism for compensating non-material harm in case of its violation. The formal-legal, comparative-legal, systemic-structural and historical-legal methods were applied, together with doctrinal analysis of national and foreign literature and case law. The study established that the declaration of will in question constitutes an authorising unilateral civil law transaction; four competing doctrinal concepts of its nature were analysed; and the optimal theoretical model for the legal order of the Republic of Uzbekistan was identified. The results are applicable in law-making, judicial and administrative practice in personal data protection cases, and in teaching civil and information law. Six specific legislative proposals are formulated to close the identified gaps and align national regulation with international standards.