Court case 11 K 4526/16 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2019)

The plaintiff had applied for a position at the Administrative Court. His application was rejected based on an assessment which included notes of the President of the Court. The plaintiff requested access to his personal file including that assessment, as provided for in Article 15(1) GDPR, which was kept by the Higher Administrative Court. The Court denied the request. Does Article 15 GDPR apply to hand written paper notes? In the judgement, as for the part that is relevant here, the Berlin-Brandenburg Administrative Court ruled that the GDPR does not apply to the notes of the President of the Administrative Court. According to Article 2(1) GDPR, it applies to data processing which is carried out wholly or partly by automated means. This term is not defined under Article 4 GDPR. According to Article 3(2) of the German Federal Data Protection Act (BSDG), the term automated data collection means the collection, processing or use of personal data using data processing equipment. In this case the President’s notes contain personal data of the plaintiff but they are handwritten and not collected or processed using data processing equipment.