Definitions - Data Controller

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5 pending referrals

Referral C-638/23 (Amt der Tiroler Landesregierung, 24 Oct 2023)

Referral C-563/23 (Natsionalnata agentsia za prihodite, 12 Sep 2023)

Referral C-492/23 (Russmedia Digital and Inform Media Press, 3 Aug 2023)

Referral C-332/23 (Inspektorat kam Visshia sadeben savet, 25 May 2023)

10 preliminary rulings

of 4 Oct 2024, C-200/23 (Agentsia po vpisvaniyata)

Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), in particular Article 4(7) and (9) thereof must be interpreted as meaning that the authority responsible for maintaining the commercial register of a Member State which publishes, in that register, the personal data contained in a company’s constitutive instrument, which is subject to compulsory disclosure under Directive 2017/1132 and was transmitted to it in an application for registration of the company concerned in that register, is both a ‘recipient’ of those data and, particularly in so far as it makes them available to the public, a ‘controller’ of those data, within the meaning of that provision, even where that instrument contains personal data not required by that directive or by the law of that Member State.

Article 82(3) of Regulation 2016/679 must be interpreted as meaning that an opinion of the supervisory authority of a Member State, issued on the basis of Article 58(3)(b) of that regulation, is not sufficient to exempt from liability, under Article 82(2) of that regulation, the authority responsible for maintaining the commercial register of that Member State which has the status of ‘controller’, within the meaning of Article 4(7) of that regulation.

of 11 Jul 2024, C-461/22 (MK)

of 7 Mar 2024, C-604/22 (IAB Europe)

Article 4(7) and Article 26(1) of Regulation 2016/679must be interpreted as meaning that:– first, a sectoral organisation, in so far as it proposes to its members a framework of rules that it has established relating to consent to the processing of personal data, which contains not only binding technical rules but also rules setting out in detail the arrangements for storing and disseminating personal data relating to such consent, must be classified as a ‘joint controller’ for the purpose of those provisions where, in the light of the particular circumstances of the individual case, it exerts influence over the personal data processing at issue, for its own purposes, and determines, as a result, jointly with its members, the purposes and means of such processing. The fact that such a sectoral organisation does not itself have direct access to the personal data processed by its members under those rules does not preclude it from holding the status of joint controller for the purpose of those provisions;– second, the joint controllership of that sectoral organisation does not extend automatically to the subsequent processing of personal data carried out by third parties, such as website or application providers, with regard to users’ preferences for the purposes of targeted online advertising.

of 5 Dec 2023, C-683/21 (Nacionalinis visuomenės sveikatos centras)

Article 4(7) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation),must be interpreted as meaning that an entity which has entrusted an undertaking with the development of a mobile IT application and which has, in that context, participated in the determination of the purposes and means of the processing of personal data carried out through that application may be regarded as a controller, within the meaning of that provision, even if that entity has not itself performed any processing operations in respect of such data, has not expressly agreed to the performance of specific operations for such processing or to that mobile application being made available to the public, and has not acquired the abovementioned mobile application, unless, prior to that application being made available to the public, that entity expressly objected to such making available and to the resulting processing of personal data.

Article 4(7) and Article 26(1) of Regulation 2016/679must be interpreted as meaning that the classification of two entities as joint controllers does not require that there be an arrangement between those entities regarding the determination of the purposes and means of the processing of personal data in question; nor does it require that there be an arrangement laying down the terms of the joint control.

of 9 Jul 2020, C-272/19 (Land Hessen)

Judgment of 24 Sep 2019, C-136/17 (GC and Others)

The provisions of Article 8(1) and (5) of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data must be interpreted as meaning that the prohibition or restrictions relating to the processing of special categories of personal data, mentioned in those provisions, apply also, subject to the exceptions provided for by the directive, to the operator of a search engine in the context of his responsibilities, powers and capabilities as the controller of the processing carried out in connection with the activity of the search engine, on the occasion of a verification performed by that operator, under the supervision of the competent national authorities, following a request by the data subject.

Judgment of 29 Jul 2019, C-40/17 (Fashion ID)

The operator of a website, such as Fashion ID GmbH & Co. KG, that embeds on that website a social plugin causing the browser of a visitor to that website to request content from the provider of that plugin and, to that end, to transmit to that provider personal data of the visitor can be considered to be a controller, within the meaning of Article 2(d) of Directive 95/46. That liability is, however, limited to the operation or set of operations involving the processing of personal data in respect of which it actually determines the purposes and means, that is to say, the collection and disclosure by transmission of the data at issue.

Judgment of 10 Jul 2018, C-25/17 (Jehovan todistajat)

Article 2(d) of Directive 95/46, read in the light of Article 10(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, must be interpreted as meaning that it supports the finding that a religious community is a controller, jointly with its members who engage in preaching, for the processing of personal data carried out by the latter in the context of door-to-door preaching organised, coordinated and encouraged by that community, without it being necessary that the community has access to those data, or to establish that that community has given its members written guidelines or instructions in relation to the data processing.

Judgment of 5 Jun 2018, C-210/16 (Wirtschaftsakademie Schleswig-Holstein)

Article 2(d) of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data must be interpreted as meaning that the concept of ‘controller’ within the meaning of that provision encompasses the administrator of a fan page hosted on a social network.

Judgment of 13 May 2014, C-131/12 (Google Spain and Google)

Article 2(b) and (d) of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data are to be interpreted as meaning that, first, the activity of a search engine consisting in finding information published or placed on the internet by third parties, indexing it automatically, storing it temporarily and, finally, making it available to internet users according to a particular order of preference must be classified as ‘processing of personal data’ within the meaning of Article 2(b) when that information contains personal data and, second, the operator of the search engine must be regarded as the ‘controller’ in respect of that processing, within the meaning of Article 2(d).

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