YS v Minister voor Immigratie, Integratie en Asiel and Minister voor Immigratie, Integratie en Asiel v M and S.
Date: 2014-07-17
38. There is no doubt that the data relating to the applicant for a residence permit and contained in a minute, such as the applicant’s name, date of birth, nationality, gender, ethnicity, religion and language, are information relating to that natural person, who is identified in that minute in particular by his name, and must consequently be considered to be ‘personal data’ (see, to that effect, inter alia the judgment in Huber , C‑524/06, EU:C:2008:724, paragraphs 31 and 43).
44. As regards those rights of the data subject, referred to in Directive 95/46, it must be noted that the protection of the fundamental right to respect for private life means, inter alia, that that person may be certain that the personal data concerning him are correct and that they are processed in a lawful manner. As is apparent from recital 41 in the preamble to that directive, it is in order to carry out the necessary checks that the data subject has, under Article 12(a) of the directive, a right of access to the data relating to him which are being processed. That right of access is necessary, inter alia, to enable the data subject to obtain, depending on the circumstances, the rectification, erasure or blocking of his data by the controller and consequently to exercise the right set out in Article 12(b) of that directive (see, to that effect, the judgment in Rijkeboer , C‑553/07, EU:C:2009:293, paragraphs 49 and 51).
45. In contrast to the data relating to the applicant for a residence permit which is in the minute and which may constitute the factual basis of the legal analysis contained therein, such an analysis, as the Netherlands and French Governments have noted, is not in itself liable to be the subject of a check of its accuracy by that applicant and a rectification under Article 12(b) of Directive 95/46.
46. In those circumstances, extending the right of access of the applicant for a residence permit to that legal analysis would not in fact serve the directive’s purpose of guaranteeing the protection of the applicant’s right to privacy with regard to the processing of data relating to him, but would serve the purpose of guaranteeing him a right of access to administrative documents, which is not however covered by Directive 95/46.
47. In an analogous context, as regards the processing of personal data by the EU institutions, governed on the one hand by 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 2001 L 8, p. 1), and on the other by Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (OJ 2001 L 145, p. 43), the Court has previously held, in paragraph 49 of the judgment in Commission v Bavarian Lager , C‑28/08 P, EU:C:2010:378, that those regulations have different objectives and that, in contrast to Regulation No 1049/2001, Regulation No 45/2001 is not designed to ensure the greatest possible transparency of the decision-making process of the public authorities and to promote good administrative practices by facilitating the exercise of the right of access to documents. That finding applies equally to Directive 95/46, which, in essence, has the same objective as Regulation No 45/2001.
54. As a preliminary point, it should be noted that the provisions of Directive 95/46, in so far as they govern the processing of personal data liable to infringe fundamental freedoms, in particular the right to privacy, must necessarily be interpreted in the light of fundamental rights, which, according to settled case-law of the Court, form an integral part of the general principles of law whose observance the Court ensures and which are now set out in the Charter (see, inter alia, the judgments in Connolly v Commission , C‑274/99 P, EU:C:2001:127, paragraph 37; Österreichischer Rundfunk and Others , C‑465/00, C‑138/01 and C‑139/01, EU:C:2003:294, paragraph 68; and Google Spain and Google , C‑131/12, EU:C:2014:317, paragraph 68).
55. Article 8 of the Charter, which guarantees the right to the protection of personal data, provides in paragraph 2, inter alia, that everyone has the right of access to data which have been collected concerning him or her. That requirement is implemented by Article 12(a) of Directive 95/46 (see, to that effect, the judgment in Google Spain and Google , EU:C:2014:317, paragraph 69).
57. Although Directive 95/46 requires Member States to ensure that every data subject can obtain from the controller of personal data communication of all such data processed by the controller relating to the data subject, it leaves it to the Member States to determine the actual material form that that communication must take, as long as it is ‘intelligible’, in other words it allows the data subject to become aware of those data and to check that they are accurate and processed in compliance with that directive, so that that person may, where relevant, exercise the rights conferred on him by Articles 12(b) and (c), 14, 22 and 23 of the directive (see, to that effect, the judgment in Rijkeboer , EU:C:2009:293, paragraphs 51 and 52).
63. It should be borne in mind that, according to settled case-law of the Court, questions on the interpretation of EU law referred by a national court in the factual and legislative context which that court is responsible for defining, and the accuracy of which is not a matter for the Court to determine, enjoy a presumption of relevance. The Court may refuse to rule on a question referred by a national court only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of EU law that is sought bears no relation to the actual facts of the main action or its purpose, where the problem is hypothetical, or where the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it (see, inter alia, the judgment in Márquez Samohano , C‑190/13, EU:C:2014:146, paragraph 35 and the case-law cited).
67. It is clear from the wording of Article 41 of the Charter that it is addressed not to the Member States but solely to the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the European Union (see, to that effect, the judgment in Cicala , C‑482/10, EU:C:2011:868, paragraph 28). Consequently, an applicant for a resident permit cannot derive from Article 41(2)(b) of the Charter a right to access the national file relating to his application.
68. It is true that the right to good administration, enshrined in that provision, reflects a general principle of EU law (judgment in HN , C‑604/12, EU:C:2014:302, paragraph 49). However, by their questions in the present cases, the referring courts are not seeking an interpretation of that general principle, but ask whether Article 41 of the Charter may, in itself, apply to the Member States of the European Union.