Lower Saxony's data protection authority wants public prosecutor's rights
When fines from data protection authorities end up in court, they are left out. Lower Saxony wants to change that, following cartel law.
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Lower Saxony's data protection officer proposes that the supervisory authority should receive the same rights in fine proceedings as the public prosecutor's office in order to relieve the latter. Cartel law should serve as a model, where this regulation has already been successfully applied and ensures precisely that relief. The reason for the proposal, according to the State Commissioner for Data Protection Lower Saxony (LfD), Denis Lehmkemper, are several judicial fine proceedings in the recent past in which “imposed fines were significantly reduced or completely overturned.” However, he does not want this to be understood as criticism, but rather as an optimal use of existing expertise.
Relief based on a proven model
In the statement, Lehmkemper explains a peculiarity in current law: If an objection is filed against the fine notice of his authority and it lands in court, the data protection supervisory authority automatically loses the possibility to continue the proceedings. Instead, the public prosecutor's office, “which has to familiarize itself with data protection law”, takes over. Above all, the data protection supervisory authority cannot even lodge a legal appeal against a decision of the first instance itself. Only if the supervisory authority receives the rights of the public prosecutor's office here can it continue the proceedings it initiated with its expertise in court.
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Although Lehmkemper does not name an example of the lost fine proceedings, there was a particularly high-profile case in the spring: notebooksbilliger.de had a GDPR fine of 10.4 million euros reduced to 900,000 euros through legal action. “We conduct fine proceedings with great professional diligence, but lose influence precisely when it goes to court,” says the data protection officer. The “complex proceedings” are rather alien to the usual activities of the public prosecutor's office, and the model from cartel law has long been proven. The Lower Saxony state government should advocate for such a change in the Bundesrat in order to increase efficiency and relieve the judiciary.
(mho)
