ABN AMRO – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2020)

In the context of a litigation with his brother, the applicant requested access to a series of banking information to ABN AMRO, which refused to grant access to these data. Court of Appeal is of the opinion that the documents as such could not be qualified as personal data within the meaning of the Wbp and the AVG: the requested data mainly relate to information regarding persons working at ABN AMRO, the question as to which persons had access to certain data and the question as to why, when and by whom the acts referred to by [Appellant 1] were performed. He also requested a large number of reports of telephone conversations and e-mail correspondence. On the basis of the CJEU case-law in Y vs MS and the Supreme Court, it cannot be said that such data can be regarded as personal data, since these (internal) documents relating to certain acts of ABN AMRO are not in themselves data about [Appellant 1], and these documents as such cannot be checked or corrected by [Appellant 1]. Therefore, ABN AMRO cannot be obliged to grant access to or a copy of these documents by invoking the Wbp and the AVG.