CJEU: in the references for preliminary rulings the national judge must anonymise the data
On July 20, 2018, the Official Journal of the European Union (C 257/1) published a document in which the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) clarifies to national courts and tribunals the essential characteristics of the preliminary ruling procedure and the factors to be taken into account before submitting questions to the the ECJ for a preliminary ruling.
In particular, the ECJ highlights that close attention must be paid to the protection of personal data of the natural persons involved in the proceedings.
Considering also that the ruling will be published in all official languages of the EU, it is necessary for the referring court or tribunal itself – which alone has full knowledge of the file submitted to the ECJ – “to render anonymous, in its request for a preliminary ruling, the names of natural persons referred to in the request or concerned by the dispute in the main proceedings and to redact any information which could enable them to be identified.”
Such anonymization shall be done before the lodging of the request for the preliminary ruling and the service of that request on the interested persons, or it would be devoid of practical purpose, given also the increasing use of search engines and new information technologies.
The recommendation provide an annex describing the essential elements of a request for a preliminary ruling.
The full text of the recommendations to national courts and tribunals in relation to the initiation of preliminary ruling proceedings is available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu….
For more information, Francesca Giannoni-Crystal and Federica Romanelli.
Follow us on& Like us on