Action brought on 7 January 2019 — CJ v Court of Justice of the European Union

(Case T-1/19)

(2019/C 164/56)

Language of the case: English

Parties

Applicant: CJ (represented by: V. Kolias, lawyer)

Defendant: Court of Justice of the European Union

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

— declare contrary to the Treaties the failure of the defendant to anonymize procedural documents referring to him by name and published on the world wide web by the General Court and the former Civil Service Tribunal, subsidiarily its failure to make nominal versions of such documents inaccessible to world wide web search providers;

— order the defendant to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on two pleas in law.

1. First plea in law, alleging infringement of Article 20 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and arguing in particular: — that the applicant has brought actions against his former employer before the former Civil Service Tribunal and the General Court; — that procedural documents of those actions have been published referring to the applicant by name and are accessible to world wide web search providers like Google; — that accessibility to such search providers facilitates the profiling of the applicant by any Internet user in the world, including current and any prospective employers; — that from such profiling arises the risk of discrimination against the applicant; — that the Court of Justice of the European Union has decided to anonymize by default published procedural documents for all requests for a preliminary ruling relating to natural persons and received after 1 July 2018; — that the anonymization of published procedural documents for any other type of action under the Treaties remains at the absolute discretion of the judicature of the European Union, — that the natural persons involved in requests for a preliminary ruling brought before the Court of Justice after 1 July 2018 and the applicant are not treated equally.

2. Second plea in law, alleging that the General Court has breached Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and arguing in particular: — that the purpose of publishing procedural documents is, in the words of the Court of Justice, to ‘guarante[e] that citizens are informed and have the right to open courts’; — that to achieve that purpose it is unnecessary to publish versions of procedural documents referring to the applicant by name or, subsidiarily, to make such versions accessible to world wide web search providers like Google; — that the failure of the General Court to end such practice infringes Articles 4(1)(c) and 5(a) of Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council (1), subsidiarily Articles 4(1)(c) and 5(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council. (2)

(1) Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2000 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Community institutions and bodies and on the free movement of such data (OJ L 8, 12.1.2001, p. 1).

(2) Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2018 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 and Decision No 1247/2002/EC (OJ L 295, 21.11.2018, p. 39).