- Enforcing jurisdiction
- Austria · Geography does not establish applicable law.
- Confirmed applicable legislation
- Privacy topics
Land Nordrhein-Westfalen – CJEU Judgment (Austria, 2020)
CJEU judgment — not a DPA enforcement action
This is a Court of Justice ruling, not an enforcement action by a data protection authority. It is not included in cookie statistics or the Risk Calculator.
The Court of Justice ruled that a company acting as an insolvency administrator can access certain tax information about another company. This matters because it clarifies that access rights under GDPR apply even when the request comes from a company, not just individuals.
What happened
The Court ruled on a case where an insolvency administrator requested tax information about a company from local tax authorities.
Who was affected
The company represented by the insolvency administrator was affected by this decision regarding access to its tax information.
What the authority found
The Court held that the insolvency administrator could exercise access rights to information about the company, despite the tax authority's refusal based on tax secrecy.
Why this matters
This ruling sets a precedent for how access rights under GDPR can be interpreted for companies, highlighting that legal entities also have rights to their data. Businesses should be aware of their rights regarding data access.
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Automated check recorded — 19 March 2026.
Processing notes: articles corrected, national law identified, authority corrected.
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D.-H.T acting as the insolvency administrator of J & S Service (‘data subject’) requested certain tax information about the data subject from the German local tax authorities (‘data controller’). The German Abgabenordnung (‘Tax Code’) extends the application of the GDPR to legal persons, not just natural persons. However, the data controller refused D.-H.T’s request for information, relying on Article 23(1)(e)&(j) GDPR and Paragraph 32 German Tax Code. D.-H.T successfully challenged this refusal at the German Administrative Court. The data controller lodged an appeal to the Higher Administrative Court which affirmed the judgment of the court of first instance, holding that because D.-H.T (a company) was the insolvency administrator of the data subject (another company), it could therefore exercise all access rights of the data subject. It also reasoned that the data subject's right to access information was not limited by any specific legislation on tax secrecy. The dissatisfied data controller lodged a further appeal against this decision to the German Federal Administrative Court which then requested a preliminary ruling from the CJEU on interpretation of Article 23(1)(j) GDPR. The Advocate General found that the CJEU lacked jurisdiction to give a preliminary ruling because the scope of the relevant provision of the German Tax Code which sought to protect information of legal persons was materially different from the scope of the GDPR which protects the personal data of natural persons. On the merits, he found that the limitation in Article 23(1)(j) GDPR applies to the enforcement of civil law claims pursued by both private persons and public bodies. He also found that this limitation in Article 23(1)(j) GDPR includes the defence against civil law claims and does not depend on the condition that a civil law claim must first be established. The CJEU emphasized that the GDPR’s main aim is to protect the fundamental right of natural persons with respect to the
Outcome
CJEU Case
A judgment or Advocate General opinion in a case before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Related Cases (0)
No other cases found for Land Nordrhein-Westfalen in AT
This is the only recorded case for this entity in this jurisdiction.
Details
Judgment Date
10 December 2020
Authority
Court of Justice of the European Union
About this data
Cite as: Cookie Fines. Land Nordrhein-Westfalen - Austria (2020). Retrieved from cookiefines.eu
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