GDPR

On January 9, 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) issued a decision on the GDPR’s lawfulness and data minimization principles.

The case arose after a French association (“Mousse”) complained to the French Supervisory Authority (“CNIL”) about the fact that France’s main train company SNCF requires customers to indicate their title and gender identity by ticking either “Sir” or “Madam” when purchasing a train ticket online.  Mousse considered that such a mandatory requirement could not be justified under the “contractual performance” or “legitimate interests” legal bases set out in Article 6 GDPR, and infringed the GDPR’s principles of lawfulness, data minimization and transparency. 

The CNIL dismissed the complaint, and Mousse appealed the CNIL’s decision before the French Administrative Supreme Court (“Conseil d’Etat”), which stayed the proceedings to refer some questions to the CJEU.Continue Reading CJEU Finds Customers’ Title Is Not Necessary Data For The Purchase Of A Train Ticket

On 2 December 2024, the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) adopted its draft guidelines on Article 48 GDPR (the “Draft Guidelines”). The Draft Guidelines are intended to provide guidance on the GDPR requirements applicable to private companies in the EU that receive requests or binding demands for personal data from public authorities (e.g., law enforcement or national security agencies, as well as other regulators) located outside the EU.Continue Reading EDPB adopts draft guidelines on requirements when responding to requests from non-EU public authorities

In the past few weeks, there have been significant developments relating to the “legitimate interests” legal basis under Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR:

  • On 4 October 2024, the Court of Justice of the EU (“CJEU”) handed down its judgment in a case relating to the Royal Dutch Lawn
Continue Reading Five key takeaways from recent EU developments on the GDPR’s “legitimate interests” legal basis

In recent months, the European Court of Justice (“CJEU”) issued five judgments providing some clarity on the scope of individuals’ rights to claim compensation for “material and non-material damage” under Article 82 of the GDPR. These rulings will inform companies’ exposure to compensation claims, particularly in the context of the EU’s Collective Redress Directive, but open questions remain about the quantum of compensation courts will offer in these cases and we expect both the CJEU and national courts to deliver additional case-law clarifying this topic in the coming year (for more information on recent CJEU cases related to compensation, see our previous blog posts here and here).

  • In VB v Natsionalna agentsia za prihodite (C-340/21), the CJEU concluded that individuals may have suffered “non-material damage”—and therefore be able to claim compensation—if they can demonstrate that they feared future misuse of personal data that was compromised in a personal data breach.  
  • In VX v Gemeinde Ummendorf (C-456/22), the CJEU found that there is no de minimis threshold for damage, below which individuals cannot claim for compensation.
  • In BL v MediaMarktSaturn (C-687-21), the CJEU restated its existing case-law, and expanded upon its analysis in VB by clarifying that alleged harms cannot be “purely hypothetical”.
  • In Kočner v Europol (C-755/21), the CJEU awarded non-material damages of €2000 for the publication in newspapers of transcripts of “intimate” text messages.
  • In GP v Juris GmbH (C-741/21), the CJEU found that where one processing activity infringes multiple provisions of the GDPR, this should not allow claimants to “double-count” the harm they suffered.

We provide further detail on each case below.Continue Reading Rounding up Five Recent CJEU Cases on GDPR Compensation

On February 28, the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) announced that EU supervisory authorities (“SAs”) will undertake a coordinated enforcement action in 2024 regarding data subjects’ right of access under the GDPR.  For context, the EDPB selects a particular topic each year to serve as the focus for pan-EU coordinated enforcement.

In 2023, regulators focused upon data protection officers’ designation and role.  And, on January 17, 2024, the EDPB published its report providing an overview of the actions SAs took in the context of the 2023 action.  This blog post provides an overview of what you can expect from the coordinated enforcement action in 2024, based on the lessons learned from 2023.Continue Reading EDPB’s 2024 Coordinated Enforcement Action on the Access Right: What Can You Expect?

On March 7, 2024, the European Court of Justice (“CJEU”) rendered its judgment in an appeal against a decision of the EU General Court (C-479/22P).  In the original decision, the General Court decided that the information contained in a press release by OLAF (a European anti-fraud organization) regarding fraud committed by an unnamed scientist was not personal data as the scientist was not identifiable from the press release (for more on the General Court’s decision, see our blog post here). The scientist appealed the decision arguing that she could easily be identified from the information released by OLAF and thus that the data were personal data.  The EU law concerned in this case is Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, which applies to the processing of personal data within EU bodies, rather than the GDPR, though the definition of personal data is the same in both regulations.Continue Reading European Court Clarifies Concept of Personal Data

On March 7, 2024, the CJEU rendered its judgement in the IAB Europe case (C-604/22).   The case relates to role of IAB Europe, a sector organization, in its Transparency and Consent Framework (“TCF”) used by companies to record the GDPR consent granted (or not granted) by a user and to document compliance with their GDPR transparency obligations.  The framework is widely used in digital advertising, including in real-time bidding scenarios; below, we set out the court’s three main findings.Continue Reading CJEU Decides the IAB Europe Case, Expanding the Concept of Controllership

On February 13, 2024, the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) adopted an opinion on the notion of “main establishment” of a controller in the context of Article 4(16)(a) of GDPR.  The opinion aims to clarify (i) the relevant conditions for the determination of whether a controller has a “main establishment” in the EU, for controllers that have more than one establishment in the EU; and (ii) the application of the so-called “one-stop-shop” mechanism in these scenarios.  

We provide below an overview of the EDPB’s opinion.Continue Reading EDPB Clarifies the Notion of “Main Establishment” under the GDPR

In December 2023, the Dutch SA fined a credit card company €150,000 for failure to perform a proper data protection impact assessment (“DPIA”) in accordance with Art. 35 GDPR for its “identification and verification process”.Continue Reading Dutch SA Sanctions Credit Card Company for Failure to Perform Data Protection Impact Assessment

On January 15, 2024, the European Commission released its report on the first review of the functioning of the existing eleven adequacy decisions adopted under the pre-GDPR framework.  

The Commission concluded that personal data transferred from the European Economic Area to any of Andorra, Argentina, Canada (for PIPEDA-regulated entities), the Faroe Islands, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Israel, Jersey, New Zealand, Switzerland and Uruguay continue to receive an adequate level of protection.Continue Reading European Commission Retains Adequacy Decisions for Data Transfers to Eleven Countries