Proximus NV – CJEU Judgment (Belgium, 2022)

Proximus, a provider of telecommunications services provider in Belgium, also provides telephone books and telephone enquiry services for the public (hereinafter "directories"), according to the Law about Electronic Communication. These directories contain the name, addresse and phone number (hereinafter "information") of the different public telephone services providers (hereinafter "operators"). Other directories, published by third parties, exist. The information of these subscribers are communicated regularly to Proximus by the operators, except those of subscribers who expressed their wish not to appear in the directories published by Proximus. In Belgium, the distinction between the subscribers who want to appear in a directory and those who don't, is in practice expressed by assigning a code in the registration of each subscriber, namely "NNNNN" to the subscribers whose information can appear, and "XXXXX" to the subscribers whose information stays confidential. Proximus transmits the information it receives to other providers of directories. The complainant is a subscriber of the telephone service operato Telenet, who is active on the Belgian market. Telenet does not provide directories but transmits the information of its subscribers to providers of directories, among them to Proximus. The 13th January 2019 this subscriber demanded Proximus not to have appear his information in the directories published either by Proximus or by third parties. Following this demand, Proximus modifiier the status of this subscriber in its information system, so that the information of that subscriber should not made public any more. The 31st January 2019, Proximus received from Telenet a periodic update of the data of the subscribers of the latter. This update contained new data of the concerned subscriber, which were not indicated as confidential. This information was handled automatically by Proximus and were registered in a way that they appeared again in the directory of