GDPR compliance Judging cases at national level —

Transcript:GDPR compliance Judging cases at national level —:
GDPR compliance Judging cases at national level — selected problems arising in the domestic case law The Hon. Ms. Justice Marie Baker, The Irish Supreme Court Friends of the Irish Environment v. Commissioner for Environmental Information Case C-470/19, ECLI:EU:C:2020:986 ▶ Request to the Central Office of the High Court under the AIE Regulations for pleadings, affidavits, documents etc. lodged by parties to an environmental case which had been fully determined in the High Court. ▶ The question specifically considered by the High Court was whether the Courts Service was “acting in a judicial capacity” and that led to a reference under Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union which concluded that the courts are outside the scope of the definition of a public authority as they exercised institutionally judicial functions. ▶ The opinion of Advocate General Bobek Environmental Information offers a useful analysis of the meaning of “public authority” and he concluded that the phrase should not be interpreted as “entertaining a purely functional or a purely institutional” interpretation. Instead, an “institutional definition with the functional corrective” is proposed Case C-175/20 SIA ‘SS’v Valsts ieņēmumu dienests ▶ Advocate General Bobek in his opinion described the GDPR as having a reach that is “virtually limitless” and observed that it is “rather difficult nowadays to find a situation where someone is not processing some personal data somewhere at some stage”. ▶ As he correctly says, that approach results from the elevation of the protection of personal data under Article 8 of the Charter to an overriding fundamental right (what he calls perhaps somewhat mischievously a “super right”). ▶ He also observes that when GDPR or its predecessor were enacted it was unlikely that it was thought that they would govern such matters as access of trainee accountants to their examination scripts or preventing the identification of a party to a traffic accident by the police or limiting the disclosure of the payment by tax by a company in liquidation to the liquidator. Case C-175/20 SIA ‘SS’v Valsts ieņēmumu dienests ▶ The SIA is the provider of online advertising services. The reference to the ECJ arose from a request from the National Tax Authority of Latvia to forward data relating to second hand car advertisements to ensure that the taxes on the sale of cars are properly collected. ▶ Recital 1 of the GDPR affords an exemption to