Region: Germany

Germany’s Federal Cartel Office will continue investigating whether Meta has unlawfully tied its virtual reality products to its social media platform, despite the company deciding to no longer force its Meta Quest headset users to set up a Facebook account.

24 November 2022

The German Federal Court of Justice has asked the ECJ a second set of questions in an ongoing dispute between an association of consumer groups and Meta, in a move that could further complicate data protection litigation in the EU.

10 November 2022

NGO Big Brother Watch has filed a complaint with the UK regulator over concerns that facial recognition company PimEyes is unlawfully processing the biometric data of millions of UK citizens.

09 November 2022

Ulrich Kelber has been Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information since 2019, taking on the role on the eve of the Schrems II decision. The effects of that ruling have been especially felt in Germany and now, as the BfDI prepares to pore over Biden’s latest executive order, he is overseeing a reform of the way the country’s local data protection authorities collaborate and taking on the use of Facebook fan pages.

01 November 2022

A German NGO is pursuing the national train operator over its use of in-app trackers, which it says forward travel information to advertisers without consent.

25 October 2022

Defence lawyers welcomed a recent European Court of Justice opinion that could severely restrict the availability of non-material damages under the GDPR – but claimant-side observers have warned that shutting down non-material damages will further undermine the regulation’s effectiveness.

21 October 2022

A company aspiring to set the first EU-wide GDPR certification scheme has made a major advance after its proposal won approval from its local data protection authority.

13 October 2022

The two Bavarian state watchdogs’ heads have said the US appears to have broadly “understood European concerns” on the transfer mechanism, suggesting that the new tool could appease concerns over US transfers –  if approved by the EDPB.

12 October 2022

Two German state regulators have called for a change in attitudes towards data protection impact assessments and anonymisation, and said their work in the past year has focused on the compliance of technical systems used by the private sector with cybersecurity requirements.

11 October 2022

EuroPriSe is hoping that a raft of recommendations put forward by the EDPB will only amount to a short delay in the company’s ambitions to be the first EU-wide GDPR certification regime.

23 September 2022