Court case L 3 R 7/21 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2021)

The data subject did an apprenticeship from 1978 to 1983. The pension notice mentioned her apprenticeship with 31 months. This was the period which the defendant acknowleged as being eligible for the data subject's pension. The data subject did not contest this notion of the defendant. However, with her claim before the Social Court of Hamburg (Sozialgericht Hamburg - SG Hamburg) she requested clarification that her apprenticeship did not only take 31 months but 5 years. She was afraid of drawbacks on account of an official document mentioning only 31 months. The Social Court of Hamburg denied her request. The Regional Social Court (Landessozialgericht Hamburg - LSG Hamburg) upheld the decision of the Social Court on the basis of the Social Court's reasoning. In its not published decision, the Social Court of Hamburg referrered to the beginning of the second sentence of Article 16 GDPR which states that the pruposes of the processing have to be taken into account. As a consequence, it reasoned that the concept of completeness in Article 16 GDPR is to be understood relatively and not absolutely. Personal data is therefore only incomplete in the sense of Article 16 GDPR if it is so incomplete that the purpose of the processing can no longer be achieved. Insofar as the data satisfies the (possibly very specific) purpose determined by the controller, the data subject cannot demand the inclusion of additional data which, from his point of view, is supposedly useful in the respective context but is not necessary to achieve the purpose. The purpose of listing the periods in the contested notice of the defendant was to justify the amount of the pension granted. This was already apparent from the fact that the insurance history was preceded by the explanatory statement that the list contained data that is relevant for determining the amount of pension. The insurance history did not serve the purpose of presenting a complete curriculum vitae of the plaintiff.