Data protection laws and policies have been studied extensively in recent years, but little is known about the parliamentary politics of data protection. This imitation applies even to the European Union (EU) that has taken the global lead in data protection and privacy regulation. For patching this notable gap in existing research, this paper explores the data protection questions raised by the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the Parliament's plenary sessions and the answers given to these by the European Commission. Over a thousand of such questions and answers are covered in a period from 1995 to early 2023. Given computational analysis based on text mining, the results indicate that (a) data protection has been actively debated in the Parliament during the past twenty years. No noticeable longitudinal trends are present; the debates have been relatively constant. As could be expected, (b) the specific data protection laws in the EU have frequently been referenced in these debates, which (c) do not seem to align along conventional political dimensions such as the left-right axis. Furthermore, (d) numerous distinct data protection topics have been debated by the parliamentarians, indicating that data protection politics in the EU go well-beyond the recently enacted regulations.

翻译：近年来，数据保护法律与政策得到广泛研究，但关于数据保护的议会政治却鲜为人知。这一情况同样适用于在数据保护与隐私监管领域占据全球领先地位的欧盟。为弥补现有研究的显著空白，本文探究了欧洲议会议员在议会全体会议中提出的数据保护相关问题，以及欧盟委员会对这些问题的回应。研究涵盖了1995年至2023年初的千余项问答。基于文本挖掘的计算分析结果表明：（a）过去二十年间，数据保护议题在议会中得到了积极辩论，且未呈现显著的时间趋势，辩论热度相对稳定；（b）欧盟具体的数据保护法律在相关辩论中被频繁引用；（c）这些辩论并未沿着传统政治维度（如左右轴）展开；（d）议员们围绕众多不同数据保护议题展开辩论，表明欧盟的数据保护政治已远超近期颁布的法规范畴。