Minister for Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2020)

In 2013, as part of the integrated approach to rogue dog trafficking by the Police National Unit Animal Welfare Expertise Centre, a so-called pre-weighing document has been drawn up. This document contains data from dog handlers with sufficient indicators to justify further investigation. The dog handlers listed in the pre-road document are included in the general roadmap 'Canitas project' (hereafter: the roadmap) that has been drawn up for a national enforcement action day, and which in section 1.4 contains a diagram with data from dog handlers. The data of applicant and appellant are included in this diagram. The project involved cooperation with, among others, the National Animal Protection Inspectorate and the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. Within the framework of integral enforcement, the roadmap was shared with the administrative bodies affiliated to the Regional Information and Expertise Centre East Brabant. The applicant and the appellant have requested the deletion of their data from the pre-weighing document and the schedule according to the GDPR. The Minister takes the view that data in the roadmap will not be processed unlawfully. In addition, the right to be forgotten of Article 17 GDPR is not intended to correct or delete opinions with which the applicants disagree. Moreover, in connection with the processing of their data, the applicant and the appellant also brought civil proceedings for damages against the Minister. In that context, the data are necessary for the substantiation of a legal action, so that the exception in Article 17(3) GDPR applies, according to the Minister. The central question in the civil proceedings is whether the decision of the Minister not to delete the personal is well founded. The court noted that the last decision of the Minister is no longer based on Article 17(3) GDPR. Instead the decision is based on Article 6(4) GDPR. However the Minister did not explain well enough why the defence of legal clai