The legal dispute over illegally stored tenant data by the real estate company Deutsche Wohnen is before the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The Kammergericht (KG) Berlin asked the ECJ about this.
A spokesman for the EU court confirmed to Netzpolitik.org that the KG Berlin submitted two questions about the dispute to the ECJ before Christmas.
Data storage not GDPR compliant
In 2019, the former Berlin data protection officer Maja Smoltczyk imposed a fine on Deutsche Wohnen. She had accused the group of not having processed the tenants’ data in accordance with the GDPR. As a result, wage slips, self-assessment forms, tax, social and health insurance information and account statements were stored in an archive without a legal basis and were not deleted even after the authorities requested it.
However, the 26th Large Criminal Chamber of the Berlin Regional Court discontinued the 14 million fine proceedings “because of a procedural obstacle”. The public prosecutor’s office then filed a complaint with the state data protection officer due to the discontinuation of the proceedings against Deutsche Wohnen by the Berlin district court. The KG is the next higher instance to review this complaint.
(mack)