EasyJet Airlines Spain – Court Ruling (Spain, 2026)

Court Ruling
DPA AN12 March 2026Spain
final
Court Ruling

General GDPR enforcement action

This case relates to broader data protection obligations, not specifically to cookie or consent banner compliance. It is not included in cookie statistics or the Risk Calculator.

A court ruled that EasyJet Airlines Spain did not have to publish full names of employees in a seniority list, as it had already pseudonymized the data. This is important because it highlights how companies can protect employee privacy while still complying with legal obligations.

What happened

EasyJet Airlines Spain published a seniority list but kept employee identities anonymous by using numbers instead of names.

Who was affected

Employees of EasyJet Airlines Spain whose names were on the seniority list.

What the authority found

The High Court dismissed the trade union's request for full names, stating that EasyJet complied with its obligations by pseudonymizing the data.

Why this matters

This case shows that companies can meet legal requirements while also protecting employee privacy. It encourages businesses to consider how they handle personal information.

GDPR Articles Cited

AI-verified

Art. 4(1) GDPR
Art. 4(5) GDPR
Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR
View original scraped data
Art. 4(1) GDPR
Art. 4(5) GDPR
Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR

Original data from scraper before AI verification against source document.

Decision AuthorityTS
Reviewed AuthorityAN (Spain)
Source verified 15 April 2026
articles corrected
authority corrected
Full Legal Summary
Detailed

EasyJet Airlines Spain (the controller) is an airline company. In 2024, Unión Sindical Obrera-Sector de Transporte Aéreo (USO-STA, a trade union in the aviation sector) brought a case against the controller to the High Court. The controller published a seniority list on its intranet, as an obligation from its collective bargaining agreement with SITCPLA (Sindicato Independiente de Tripulantes de Cabina de Pasajeros, also a trade union). This list was made for the purpose of regulating access and organising promotions and changes of contract. The controller pseudonymised the identities of the data subjects, replacing their names with a number. The USO-STA requested the court to order the controller to publish the full names of the data subjects, as it considered that the controller did not fully comply with the collective bargaining agreement. According to USO-STA, this obligation complied with the GDPR, because the controller processed data under the legal basis of legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c) GDPR). The High Court dismissed the case on procedural grounds. According to the court, there was no current and real litigious interest, as the controller fulfilled its obligation in relation to the collective bargaining agreement. The court considered the manner in which the controller did this (pseudonymising the data) irrelevant. The trade union appealed the case to the court. The controller argued that it complied with the collective bargaining agreement, and that it pseudonymised the data to comply with the principle of data minimisation (Article 5(1)(c) GDPR) and CJEU case lawSee case C-65/2023 (MK v K GmbH), https://infocuria.curia.europa.eu/tabs/jurisprudence?lang=en&sort=DOC_DATE-DESC&searchTerm=%22c-65%2F23%22&publishedId=c-65%2F23. In addition, the controller argued that the pseudonymised data allowed data subjects to see their relative position within the company. The court first clarified that the case was admissible, as there was a potential conflict bet

Outcome

Court Ruling

A ruling by a national court on a data-protection matter.

Related Cases (0)

No other cases found for EasyJet Airlines Spain in ES

This is the only recorded case for this entity in this jurisdiction.

Details

Ruling Date

12 March 2026

Authority

DPA AN

About this data

Data: GDPRhub (noyb.eu)
Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
AI-verified and classified

Cite as: Cookie Fines. EasyJet Airlines Spain - Spain (2026). Retrieved from cookiefines.eu

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