BVwG - W256 2279237-1/6E
| BVwG - W256 2279237-1/6E | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Court: | BVwG (Austria) |
| Jurisdiction: | Austria |
| Relevant Law: | Article 15 GDPR §133 B-VG §9 AVG |
| Decided: | 06.08.2025 |
| Published: | 26.09.2025 |
| Parties: | |
| National Case Number/Name: | W256 2279237-1/6E |
| European Case Law Identifier: | ECLI:AT:BVWG:2025:W256.2279237.1.00 |
| Appeal from: | DSB (Austria) D124.0453/22 (2023-0.593.410) |
| Appeal to: | Not appealed |
| Original Language(s): | German |
| Original Source: | RIS (in German) |
| Initial Contributor: | xz |
A court held that a data subject's right of access ceases upon the death of the data subject and is not passed over to a legal successor. Therefore, the court annulled a decision by the DPA regarding a violation in the data subject’s right of access after the data subject died during the appeal procedure.
English Summary
Facts
The data subject filed a complaint with the Austrian DPA on March 16, 2022. alleging that the controller violated his right to access under Article 15 GDPR by providing incomplete details about the specific recipients of their data or the reason why the disclosure of the specific recipients was not possible pursuant to Article 15(1)(c) GDPR., and by failing to provide a copy of the data or offering inadequate justification as to why issuing a copy was not possible under Article 15(3) GDPR.
The authority upheld the complaint and ordered the controller to provide the requested information within four weeks or to adequately justify why this could not be done. The controller requested a suspension of the proceedings pending the outcome of another decision, but this request was rejected. The controller appealed the DPA’s decision.
Meanwhile, the data subject has passed away.
Holding
The Court upheld the appeal and annulled the contested decision because the data subject, a natural person, lost his party status in the proceedings upon his death. Since data protection rights are highly personal and extinguish upon the death of the data subject, they cannot be transferred to any legal successor, in accordance with the case law of the VwGH.
The extent of a person’s participation in an administrative procedure depends not only on their status as a party but also on their party capacity, that is, their ability to hold procedural rights and obligations. If the party who initiated the proceedings before the administrative authority dies, the contested decision must be terminated, pursuant to established case law.
With the loss of capacity to be a party to the procedure, which must be recognized ex officio at any stage of the proceedings, the right to pursue a data protection complaint ceases to exist. This also deprives the authority of the power to decide on the complaint. Accordingly, the contested decision was remedied.
The annulment was based on procedural grounds.
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English Machine Translation of the Decision
The decision below is a machine translation of the German original. Please refer to the German original for more details.
