2024 is off to a good start for our IP/IT/Data team with a win in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Case C-231/22 (Etat belge (Données traitées par un journal officiel)), in the framework of which @Etienne Kairis, @Francesca Biebuyck and @Pauline Van Muylder have had the pleasure to represent the Belgian Data Protection Authority (APD/GBA).
The matter related to a request for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of Articles 4(7) and 5(2) of the GDPR in the specific context of the personal data processing operations carried out by the Official Journal of a Member State.
The Moniteur belge, the agency responsible for Belgium’s Official Journal, is required under Belgian law to publish – as they stand – official acts and documents that have been prepared by third parties under their own responsibility in compliance with the applicable rules (in this case a notary) and then lodged with a judicial authority that sends them to the Moniteur Belge for publication.
The CJEU ruled that further to Article 4(7) GDPR, the Moniteur Belge can be considered a “controller” of personal data included in those acts and documents. This is even though it lacks legal personality and control over the content it publishes, as long as Belgian law determines -even implicitly- the purposes and means of data processing by the Moniteur Belge. The CJEU further stated that the Moniteur Belge is responsible for complying with Article 5(1) as regards the personal data processing operations that it is required to perform under Belgian law, unless joint responsibility in respect of those operations would be legally foreseen.
As a result, the Moniteur Belge as “data controller” should in principle erase personal data that were mistakenly included by previous successive controllers (in this case the notary and the court registry having jurisdiction to send the data to the Moniteur Belge). This last aspect will now have to be settled by the Market Court (Brussels Court of Appeal).
The judgement is available here
Please do not hesitate to reach out to our IP/IT/Data team via ip/it-team@liedekerke.com, should you wish to discuss any Data-related topic!
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