candidate for election to the defendant's chamber (chamber of dentists) – Court Ruling (Germany, 2020)

The applicant in question is a candidate for election to the defendant's chamber (chamber of dentists) meeting in 2020. The order from the High Administrative Court was directed against the order of the Verwaltungsgericht Stade (Administrative Court Stade), which had ordered the defendant to provide the applicant without delay with the surnames, first names and postal address of the applicant's constituency in question for the purposes of election advertising. As the postal addresses that the members of the Chamber had deposited with the defendant for the purpose of postal correspondence were to be transmitted, the defendant directed its complaint precisely against this. In the present case, the Court had to assess whether the applicant was entitled to a claim of injunction for the transmission of the data in question. The Court found that the applicant was not entitled to receive the surnames, first names and postal addresses of the members of the Chamber eligible to vote for his constituency from the electoral roll. Neither the relevant electoral regulations nor the principles of free and equal suffrage allow such a claim to be derived. Moreover, there is no other norm of entitlement in the context of which the applicant's interest in the promotion of his election advertising could be affected. The latter applies in particular to the data protection provisions governing the transfer of personal data by the defendant. These are not intended, according to the court, to serve the interests of the claimant, not even in the sense of a claim for error-free exercise of discretion. The regulations legitimise encroachments on the right to informational self-determination and are intended to provide the public administration with a legal basis for data processing activities and to grant the data subjects subjective rights of defence. The function as a legal basis includes cases in which the public administration decides to satisfy a legitimate interest in informati