Dan Cooper, Kristof Van Quathem, Anna Oberschelp de Meneses, and Evangelos Sakiotis of Covington and Burling write:
On October 6, 2022, the Advocate General (“AG”) of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) released an opinion in case C-300/21 to the effect that a controller or processor’s non-compliance with the GDPR does not automatically entitle data subjects to receive compensation for non-material damages pursuant to Article 82 GDPR. According to the AG, compensation is meant to remedy the consequences caused by a breach of the GDPR, and therefore a data subject must have suffered damage that he or she can affirmatively demonstrate.
The case arises from Austrian Post’s practice of collecting data, without consent, to determine the political affinity of members of the Austrian population. The claimant was assigned to a particular political affinity, although the claimant disagreed, and he thus decided to bring a claim for non-material damages (i.e., his inner discomfort).
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