Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food quality – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2020)

Plaintiff regularly represents others in Open Government Act (Wet openbaarheid van bestuur) procedures against the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (hereafter: NVWA). Plaintiff requested access to the personal data processed by the NVWA with regards to these procedures, basing their claim on article 15(1) GDPR. The NVWA partially granted the request and gave plaintiff an overview of the data processed by them with regards to the aforementioned procedures and who has access to this information. Plaintiff objected to the primary decision because - among other things - the overview was incomplete. Defendant ruled that the objection justified, revoked the primary decision gave a more complete overview. Plaintiff appealed to the decision, and argues that an overview of the processed personal data is not enough. They argue that they need a copy of the specific documents in which their personal data is processed to assess the accuracy of the data in context of these documents. The court held that to comply with an article 15(1) GDPR request, it is sufficient to provide an overview of what data is processed and in which documents, if the data in question is mostly name, address and contact information. A copy of the documents itself does not need to be provided.