Court case VI ZR 15/23 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2024)

The data subject has private health and long-term care insurance with the controller. The controller increased the contributions in 2018 and 2020. The data subject considers the premium increases to be unlawful. Consequently, in civil court, the data subject requested information on the basis of Article 15(1) GDPR from the controller about premium increases starting from 2016, including justifications for the premium adjustment and supplements to the insurance policy. The Landsgericht Verden (Regional Court of Verden) upheld the action. The controller appealed the decision to the Oberlandesgerichts Celle (Higher Regional Court of Celle). However, the Court of Appeal held that the data subject is entitled to the asserted right to information under Article 15(1) GDPR. It found that letters from the controller to the data subject, even standard letters sent to a large number of recipients with the same content, are subject to the right to information as they contain information about the data subject. The controller appealed to the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof – BGH). The Federal Court of Justice held that the access request by the data subject cannot be affirmed based on the reasoning of the Court of Appeal. Article 15 GDPR and the GDPR as such are applicable, even if the processing occurred before the GDPR came into force in 2018. This is because the request was submitted after 2018. The CJEU previously ruled that “it is applicable to a request for access to the information referred to in that provision where the processing operations which that request concerns were carried out before the date on which that regulation became applicable, but the request was submitted after that date.” (see [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62021CJ0579 CJEU Case C-579/21], para 36). However, Article 15 GDPR cannot be used in the case at issue, because of the following reasons: Firstly, in light of the broad scope of personal data und