Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit – Court Ruling (Belgium, 2021)

The complainants, Johnny Ryan, Pierre Dewitte, Jeff Ausloos, Bruno Bidon, Panoptykon (NGO), Bits of Freedom (NGO) and La Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, filed several complaints against the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) for various GDPR violations (including the principles of legality, transparency and fairness, minimisation and security among others). In total, 4 complaints were filed before the ADP and 5 before other data protection authorities through the IMI (Internal Market Information) system. These complaints were therefore joint into one investigation. An interlocutory decision, changing the language of the proceedings to French was made on 08/01/2021. Some parties did not agree with this and asked the Market Court to change the language to Dutch and to use full French text (some words where not in French). The parties reached an agreement before the Court of Appeal of Brussels (commercial section) had to render a judgement. The parties reached an agreement which made any interference from the Market Court obsolete.