Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens – CJEU Judgment (Netherlands, 2022)

In October 2018, the data subject, who was being represented by their attorney, were together approached by a journalist inside the courtroom. The journalist had certain documents from the case file which showed the data subject’s name, address and national identification number. Upon being asked by the data subject for the source of the documents, the journalist replied that they “were made available to him under the right of access to the case file” which the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of Council of State grants to journalists. Subsequently, the President of the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of Council of State confirmed to the data subject that certain documents were being given to journalists “to enable them to follow hearings, namely a copy of the notice of appeal, a copy of the response and, where appropriate, a copy of the contested judicial decision” and “those documents being destroyed at the end of the day.” The data subject and their attorney then approached the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) and claimed that “allowing journalists to have access to personal data concerning them” amounted to a violation of GDPR. However, the DPA said that it was not competent to decide on the same due to Article 55(3) GDPR, which bars supervising authorities from supervising “processing operations of courts acting in their judicial capacity.” Thereafter, the DPA forwarded the request to the President of the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of Council of State. The President of the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of Council of State took note of the complaint and in consultation with the Data Protection Commission for Administrative Law Tribunals, Netherlands “formulated a new policy on access to documents from court files”. However, the DPA’s decision to not hear the matter, and to refer it to the President of the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of Council of State, was challenged by the data subject and his attorney before the Distri