A new case received by the General Court of the CJEU was published in the Official Journal of the EU in February, Case T-881/16 HJ v EMA.
A British citizen seeks to engage the non-contractual liability of the European Medicines Agency for breaching data protection law. The applicant claims that “the documents in his personal file, which were made public and accessible to any member of staff of the European Medicines Agency for a period of time, were not processed fairly and lawfully but were processed for purposes other than those for which they were collected without that change in purpose having been expressly authorised by the applicant”.
Further, the applicant claims that “the dissemination of that sensitive data consequently called into question the applicant’s integrity, causing him real and certain non-material harm”.
The applicant asks the Court to “order the defendant to pay the applicant the symbolic sum of EUR 1 by way of compensation for the non-material harm suffered”.
Even if in the published summary there is no mention of the applicable law, it is clear that Regulation 45/2001 is relevant in this case – the data protection regulation applicable to EU institutions and bodies (EMA is an EU body). The rules of Regulation 45/2001 are fairly similar to those of Directive 95/46.
(Thanks dr. Mihaela Mazilu-Babel for bringing this case to my attention)
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