Can I record a phone call or conversation I’m part of?

There is no single EU answer — this is one of the least harmonised privacy questions. The common pattern: in many countries, recording a conversation you participate in, for your own evidence or records, is lawful even without announcing it — the reasoning: no secret is intruded on when you were meant to hear it. Recording conversations you are not part of (bugging a room, tapping others’ calls) is a crime essentially everywhere. The strict camp: a number of countries — Germany is the famous example, with its criminal-law protection of the spoken word (§201 StGB) — prohibit recording even your own calls without the other side’s consent, save narrow emergencies. Others sit in between, allowing personal-use recording but sanctioning any further use. Publishing is always the second, harder question: putting a recorded call online engages the GDPR, personality rights and often criminal law, and the “own records” justification evaporates. Journalistic public-interest publication has its own protections under national media law. Courts vs. lawfulness: even where a recording was made unlawfully, some courts still admit it as evidence in extreme cases — but never plan on that. Companies recording you (“this call may be recorded”) need a legal basis, must tell you, and your Art. 15 access right covers the recording — asking for the tape of a mis-sold contract call is a power move that works.