Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2020)

On 21 of January 2019 complainant lodged a complaint with Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens against a data broker called Focum. In his view, Focum processed his data unlawfully and wrongly rejected his erasure request. On 21 of February 2020 complainant started a court case against Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens for not deciding on his complaint on time and demanding compensation. Complainant believes that AP is obliged to issue a decision within a reasonable timeline, which is 8 weeks according to the Dutch Administrative law. Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens disagrees: Article 78(2) GDPR defines the applicable time frame in line with Article 4:13(1) of the Dutch Administrative law. AP must inform complainant of the progress or settlement of the complaint within 3 months. The Court ruled against complainant’s arguments for the following reasons: 1) Article 78(2) GDPR defines the applicable time frame in line with Article 4:13(1) of the Dutch Administrative law. The reason for not putting a deadline in the law is because complaints can lead to long and complex investigations and include cross-border data processing, meaning that other supervisory authorities might need to get involved. 2) According to Recital 141 GDPR, AP must update complainant within a reasonable period. In this case, AP sent an email to complainant on 20 march 2019, which counts as a progress report even if it doesn’t explicitly say so in the email itself. Moreover, the email stated that the investigation involved cross-border processing and that the complaint may be handled together with other European supervisory authorities. 3) When assessing whether the decision on the complaint took too long, the Court took the following into account: - AP was conducting their investigation based on several different complaints from different people. - The investigation included an on-site inspection and coordination with other supervisory authorities in the EU. - COVID-19 measures that have slowed the AP down.