Advocate-General's Opinion

The Advocate General's Opinion has been published on the recent case involving data protection issues: Satakunnan Markkinapörssi and Satamedia (C-73/07). The main questions referred to the ECJ are as follows:

Is an operation in which data on the earned income, income from capital and the wealth of natural persons arecollected from documents in the public domain held by the tax authorities and processed for publication,published alphabetically in a printed publication by income bracket and municipality in the form of extensive lists,disclosed onward on CD-ROM to be used for commercial purposes, andprocessed for the purposes of a text messaging service whereby mobile phone users can, by indicating an individual's name and home municipality and texting to a given number, receive in reply data on the earned income, income from capital and wealth of the individual indicated,to be regarded as the processing of personal data within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 95/46/EC? ¹

Is Directive 95/46/EC to be interpreted as meaning that the various operations listed in question 1(a) to (d) can be regarded as the processing of personal data carried out solely for journalistic purposes within the meaning of Article 9 of the Directive, having regard to the fact that data on over one million taxpayers has been collected from data which are in the public domain under national legislation on the right of public access? Does the fact that publication of those data is the principal aim of the operation have any bearing on the assessment in this case? Is Article 17 of Directive 95/46/EC to be interpreted in conjunction with the principles and purpose of the Directive as precluding the publication of data collected for journalistic purposes and its onward disclosure for commercial purposes?

Can Directive 95/46/EC be interpreted as meaning that personal data files containing, solely and in unaltered form, material that has been published in the media fall altogether outside its scope?

Unfortunately, the opinion is available in French, Spanish, German etc. not English, so here is the French decision. As one awaits the ECJ's judgment on this, it is likely to be of interest when considering the scope of Art. 9 of the Data Protection Directive.