In another interesting judgment on the GDPR, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) addressed whether the financial interest of the controller can also be a sufficient justification for processing personal data based on the controller’s legitimate interest. In particular, the CJEU dealt with three preliminary questions referred by the Amsterdam District Court.

The Royal Dutch Tennis Association sued the Dutch equivalent of the Data Protection Authority (“DPA”) after it was fined EUR 525,000 by the DPA for passing names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and other data on individual members to its sponsors. At the initiative of some members of the tennis federation, the Dutch DPA found this to be a violation of Article 6 of the GDPR, the data of these individuals having been transferred without their consent and for a legitimate reason. However, the Tennis Association argues that its legitimate – financial – interest, although not directly mentioned in the GDPR or given by law, but at the same time not contradicting them, is therefore legitimate.

And what does the CJEU say? According to the CJEU, the court should interpret legitimate interest in such a way that while the GDPR does not define the term and does not name the set of all possible legitimate interests, it is necessary that the inferred interest is lawful (not unlawful). Regarding another question, the CJEU even stated that the mere transfer of personal data to satisfy the financial interests of the controller may be considered necessary for the purposes of the controller’s legitimate interests. However, the condition is that this data processing is strictly necessary for the fulfilment of a legitimate financial interest.

Although it may seem that the CJEU thus sided more with the tennis association, in the conclusion of its decision it expressed the opinion that the requirement for the necessity of such use was not met in the given state of facts. However, it will be up to the Amsterdam court or other Dutch national courts to decide on the merits.