Unlocking the strategic litigation opportunities of the GDPR

Unlocking the strategic litigation opportunities of the GDPR

By Nani Jansen Reventlow, 27th September 2019

In May 2019, Access Now and noyb hosted a three-day meeting in Vienna to share knowledge and experiences on GDPR enforcement. The event covered several practical elements to take into account when litigating under the GDPR and considered the different avenues for taking GDPR complaints.

This week, DFF hosted a follow-up meeting in Berlin, which offered both an opportunity to look at the issue of GDPR litigation at field level and identify concrete options for GDPR enforcement. 21 participants from across Europe, including litigators, academics and activists, discussed issues ranging from how to address the functioning of DPAs, to using the GDPR to address the use of biometric data by private companies.

Following a mapping of current efforts of GDPR enforcement, the meeting took a critical look at a nascent framework prepared by DFF to prioritise litigation goals under the GDPR. Then, participants mapped priority litigation goals across a range of issues such as misuse of data by political parties, unlawful data processing by public services, and challenging “big tech” business models.

On the second day, participants formulated concrete case ideas distilled from the priority litigation goals and shared experiences of lessons learned in their GDPR work so far. A number of potential areas for follow-up were identified, which DFF is looking forward to supporting.

The meeting was energetically facilitated by Aspiration and hosted by the fantastic team at WE’RE ALL IN. Over the coming days, we will be publishing a number of guest posts to further highlight some of the conversations, so stay tuned for further updates.

If you are working on GDPR-related issues, have ideas for next steps or generally want to get involved, please get in touch!