Judicial Examination Office of the State North-Rhine Westphalia – Court Ruling (Germany, 2020)

The plaintiff's request for free delivery of the copy of the examination papers was rejected by the defendant based on the argumentation that the GDPR would not apply since the personal data contained in the examination papers were neither fully nor partially processed automatically, nor did they constitute data which are or are to be stored in a file system. Whether copies of exams fall under the scope of the GDPR with the consequence that respective individuals can make use of their rights under the GDPR. The court decided that the carrying out of professional examinations to acquire the basic qualification to practise a profession in one EU Member State, which entitles him/her to practise his/her profession, and the resulting processing of personal data, are likely to constitute an activity falling within the scope of Union law solely because of their abstract relevance to fundamental freedoms and the internal market. Therefore, pursuant to Section 5 (8) sentence 1 of the Data Protection Act of North Rhine-Westphalia (DSG NRW) in conjunction with Art. 15 (3) and Art. 12 (5) sentence 1 of the General Data Protection Regulation, an examinee is entitled to a free copy of the supervisory work he/she has done in connection with the Second State Examination in Law in North Rhine-Westphalia, together with the examiner's report, on paper or in a standard electronic format.