The Executive of the Municipality of Etten-Leur ('het college van burgemeester en wethouders van de gemeente Etten-Leur') – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2021)

On the 17th July 2019, the claimant submitted a request to the defendant, the Board of the Municipality of Etten-Leur ('the Board'), demanding: * the erasure of his personal data, pursuant to Article 17 GDPR, which the Board had published on the Association of Dutch Municipalities ('VNG') forum - an online forum accessible to employees at other municipalities in the Netherlands. The claimant had learned that his personal data was published on the VNG forum via an access request submitted to the the Board. * damages on account of the fact that the Board had published his personal data on the forum, in accordance with Article 82 GDPR. The claimant considered €2,500 an appropriate amount. According to the claimant, the publication of his personal data on the VNG violated the principle of proportionality. Further, the claimant argued that the Board should not have shared his personal data in this way without his permission, and that it had no legal basis for such processing under Article 6 GDPR. The Board rejected the claimant's request for erasure. In particular, it argued that the claimant's request for erasure was fundamentally unfounded, as the publication of personal data on the VNG forum was not unlawful. It was therefore not obliged to erase the personal data in line with Article 17(d), nor was it obliged to provide the claimant damages. The claimant contested this decision. The Court declared the claimant's request for erasure unfounded, and rejected the request for damages. In particular, it referred to a [https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:RVS:2020:898 decision by the Administrative Law Division of the Council of State ('AbRS') of 1 April 2020]. This decision highlighted that a municipal Board can be requested to disclose private information about an administrative matter falling under the Dutch Government Information (Public Access) Act ('Wob'), since the implementation of the Wob is a public law task of a municipal Board, and