Court case Usž-670/21-2 – Court Ruling (Croatia, 2020)

The plaintiff points out that in this particular case about the controller's obligations regarding an Access Request, he proposed to submit a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union. He proposes that the High Administrative Court annul the first-instance judgment, uphold the plaintiff's claim and annul the defendant's decision. He seeks reimbursement of the costs of the appeal proceedings. The plaintiff filed an appeal against the judgment for substantial violation of the rules of court procedure, erroneously and incompletely established facts in the dispute and erroneous application of substantive law. In making such a claim, the first-instance court did not explain and specify on the basis of which it concludes that all credit documentation should be considered personal data, nor did it correlate with the notion of personal data from Art. (4)(1) GDPR on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. The erroneous and incompletely established factual situation was committed by the court failing to establish all the circumstances of the case, and in particular failing to establish precisely what is considered personal data and why it considers all credit documentation to be personal data. The court also erred in finding that providing the respondent with a copy of the requested documentation does not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of other individuals, emphasizing that other individuals do not mean the processing manager himself. The first-instance court only states this position in the reasoning of the judgment, without explaining on the basis of which it came to such a conclusion and from which it follows that such an interpretation of the said Article of the General Data Protection Regulation should be considered valid. It also maintains that the substantive law has been erroneously applied accordingly, for all the reasons stated during the administrative dispute. In response to the appeal, the respondent fully disputes the allegations as unfounded, for the reasons stated during the administrative dispute and finally proposes that the High Administrative Court dismiss the appeal in its entirety as unfounded and uphold the judgment rejecting the plaintiff's claim for annulment. It follows from the file that the first-instance court, in determining the factual situation in the dispute, in addition to the facts established by itself, took into account the facts established in the procedure of making the disputed decision. The inspection of the case file submitted to this Court with the appeal shows that the respondent's decision upheld the request of the interested person to establish a violation of the right to protection of personal data and found that disabling the exercise of access to personal data; the plaintiff violated Art. (15)(3) GDPR and ordered the plaintiff to allow the interested person to exercise the right of access to credit documents or personal data. In the opinion of this Court, the defendant's decision is based on law and this Court considers that the defendant's finding that by denying the exercise of the right of access to personal data, ie credit documentation of the interested person, violation of Art. (15)(3) of the General Regulation on Personal Data Protection. The person concerned requested that he be given access to his personal data by providing a copy of his personal data as provided for in Art. (15)(3) GDPR. This provision does not give the controller free choice when providing copies of the personal data being processed, but is a duty and obligation that the controller must provide. This provision stipulates that in any case the controller is obliged to provide a copy of personal data being processed, which in relation to this case means that the plaintiff (a bank - name not available at the moment) is obliged to provide a copy of documents containing personal data and thus provide access to personal data or credit documents which contains personal information. Other objections raised by the plaintiff in the appeal, this Court finds unfounded and without prejudice to the different resolution of the administrative matter in question, especially because these are objections raised by the plaintiff in the proceedings before the trial court, which the trial court manifested, and whose conclusions this Court fully agrees with.