Article 86 GDPR

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Article 86 - Processing and public access to official documents
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Chapter 10: Delegated and implementing acts

Legal Text


Article 86 - Processing and public access to official documents


Personal data in official documents held by a public authority or a public body or a private body for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest may be disclosed by the authority or body in accordance with Union or Member State law to which the public authority or body is subject in order to reconcile public access to official documents with the right to the protection of personal data pursuant to this Regulation.

Relevant Recitals

Recital 4: Balance Against Other Fundamental Rights
The processing of personal data should be designed to serve mankind. The right to the protection of personal data is not an absolute right; it must be considered in relation to its function in society and be balanced against other fundamental rights, in accordance with the principle of proportionality. This Regulation respects all fundamental rights and observes the freedoms and principles recognised in the Charter as enshrined in the Treaties, in particular the respect for private and family life, home and communications, the protection of personal data, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression and information, freedom to conduct a business, the right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial, and cultural, religious and linguistic diversity.

Recital 154: Public Access to Official Documents
This Regulation allows the principle of public access to official documents to be taken into account when applying this Regulation. Public access to official documents may be considered to be in the public interest. Personal data in documents held by a public authority or a public body should be able to be publicly disclosed by that authority or body if the disclosure is provided for by Union or Member State law to which the public authority or public body is subject. Such laws should reconcile public access to official documents and the reuse of public sector information with the right to the protection of personal data and may therefore provide for the necessary reconciliation with the right to the protection of personal data pursuant to this Regulation. The reference to public authorities and bodies should in that context include all authorities or other bodies covered by Member State law on public access to documents. Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council leaves intact and in no way affects the level of protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data under the provisions of Union and Member State law, and in particular does not alter the obligations and rights set out in this Regulation. In particular, that Directive should not apply to documents to which access is excluded or restricted by virtue of the access regimes on the grounds of protection of personal data, and parts of documents accessible by virtue of those regimes which contain personal data the re-use of which has been provided for by law as being incompatible with the law concerning the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data.

Commentary

Transparency is essential to ensure the accountability of EU and national public institutions. Access to official documents is therefore recognized as a fundamental right under Article 42 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, as well as in the constitutions of many Member State. This right, however, is not absolute. It can be limited, inter alia, to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of other individuals, including the right to privacy and data protection of individuals whose personal data would be contained in such documents.

Personal Data May Be Disclosed

Article 85 GDPR states that official documents "may be disclosed" for the sake of transparency, while indirectly stressing that the disclosure of official documents containing personal data must be considered as a processing of personal data under the GDPR.

The provision further points out that a potential conflict may arise between transparency and data protection, and stress the need to reconcile those two conflicting rights, without however providing any indications as how to do it. There is, for example, no reference to the possibility to exempt controllers or processors from complying with certain obligations under the GDPR in order to facilitate access to documents. By contrast, Article 85 GDPR on freedom of expression assigns to Member States the task of reconciling freedom of expression and information with data protection rules and specifically lists which parts of the GDPR can be derogated from in that context.

Article 86 GDPR, for its part, simply knowledge that official documents containing personal data "may be disclosed" but does not provide any specific instruction on how to ensure compliance with the GDPR while ensuring sufficient transparency. The interest of reconciling data protection and transparency is simply acknowledged “but the provision does not allow for exemptions and derogations from the rules contained in the GDPR nor does it set any further conditions”. In consequence, some argues that “[w]hen examining Article 86 GDPR one can wonder what normative value it actually has”.[1]

The GDPR Remains Applicable

Having considered the above, it seems reasonable to conclude that the GDPR remains fully applicable in the context of access to documents, with the need to comply with, inter alia, the principle of lawful and fair processing (Article 5 GDPR), the obligation to have a valid legal basis (Article 6 GDPR)[2], or the rights of the data subject, and the possibility for DPAs to scrutinize such processing.

The indications offered by the case-law, although not generous, at least confirm this conclusion. For instance, in the case Magyar Helsinki Bizottság v. Hungary, the ECtHR examined the refusal of the Hungarian authorities to provide an NGO with information relating to the names and work of ex officio defence counsel on the ground that such information consisted in personal data.[3] The ECtHR considered such refusal contrary to the Convention, because (among others) the request for these names, "although they constituted personal data, related predominantly to the conduct of professional activities in the context of public proceedings", and that those activities "cannot be considered to be a private matter".

A somewhat similar approach was adopted by the CJEU in a case where a Dutch journalist had filed an access request concerning the functioning of an additional pension scheme for MEPs. The Parliament had first rejected the request in order to protect the privacy of parliamentarians. The CJEU, however, annulled this decision because disclosure would not prejudice the legitimate interests of the MEPs. In particular, “it must therefore be held that, in weighing up the interests engaged, the legitimate interests of the MEPs who are members of the additional pension scheme, which fall into the public sphere of those MEPs, must be subject to a lesser degree of protection than that which, following the logic of Regulation No 45/2001, would be enjoyed by the interests falling into their private sphere”.[4]

In conclusion, as Kranenborg correctly states, the case law of the ECtHR as well as the case law of the CJEU show that there are two criteria to assess whether disclosure of data is justified: “the distinction between private and professional matters and the 'public nature' of the data”. However, these serve only as general indications for both courts and lawmakers, leaving the actual assessment to a case by case analysis.

Decisions

→ You can find all related decisions in Category:Article 86 GDPR

References

  1. See, Kranenborg, in Kuner et al., The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Article 86 GDPR, p. 1216 (Oxford University Press 2020).
  2. On this point, careful literature makes it clear that “the Union or Member State law referred to in Article 86 on which disclosure can be based is no different from a Union or Member State law referred to in Article 6 GDPR. Recital 154 also seems to go in this direction as it states that public access to official documents may be considered to be in “the public interest”. See, Kranenborg, in Kuner et al., The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Article 86 GDPR, p. 1217 (Oxford University Press 2020).
  3. ECtHR, Magyar Helsinki Bizottsdg, 18030/11, 8 November 2016, margin number 194 (available here).
  4. CJEU, Dennekamp v. European Parliament, T-115/13, 15 July 2015, margin number 124 (available here).