Member State

A country that belongs to the European Union, currently 27 nations following Brexit. Member states are relevant to privacy because GDPR applies throughout the EU, but member states retain certain flexibility in implementation. GDPR is a regulation applying directly, but member states can adopt specific provisions in certain areas like employment data processing, social security numbers, freedom of expression, archiving and research, data protection authorities' operations, and additional conditions for processing special categories. This means privacy compliance may vary slightly between member states despite GDPR's harmonization goal. Each member state has its own data protection authority supervising GDPR compliance. Organizations operating across multiple member states must understand both GDPR requirements and specific member state implementations. The one-stop-shop mechanism reduces complexity by designating lead authorities for cross-border processing, but local variations still matter.