Austrian Privacy Group Challenges Belgian DPA's Dismissal of Complaints
Austrian privacy rights organization Noyb will challenge the Belgian Data Protection Authority's (ODA) decision to toss 16 complaints in five cases that Noyb filed, founder Max Schrems told Privacy Daily on Friday.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Privacy Daily provides accurate coverage of newsworthy developments in data protection legislation, regulation, litigation, and enforcement for privacy professionals responsible for ensuring effective organizational data privacy compliance.
ODA dismissed the cases Thursday, saying that under Belgian law, associations can lodge data-protection complaints only as representatives of individual citizens, not in their own right.
The regulator stressed, however, that associations such as Noyb contribute to data protection and respect for individuals' privacy, and that such contributions keep regulators and the ODA alert.
The General Data Protection Regulation allows EU countries to enable privacy organizations to lodge complaints on their own behalf, the watchdog noted. Given the importance of such groups, ODA added, it favors legislative change that would allow that option in Belgium.
Authorities and judges "entertain just about any theory to not deal with GDPR cases," Noyb founder Max Schrems emailed us. The fact that Noyb brings model cases is nothing new -- it has been standard for consumer organizations for decades and has been unsuccessfully challenged in many courts, he said.
"This Belgian outlier case is the only one in Europe that took the view that this was unlawful," Schrems said. The decision also clashes with the recent European Court of Justice ruling (Case C-416/23), which held that data protection authorities must deal with all complaints unless they're "excessive" (see 2501090021).