Procedural rights – the complainant is not always notified of the final decision or provided with a full copy thereof

Article(s) involved (national, EU, or other):

Problem

Sometimes the complainants are not informed about the issuance of a final decision, including in the context of the OSS mechanism.

Under Article 60(8) GDPR, the SA receiving the complaint should issue a decision on the complaint, even when the complaint is dismissed or rejected (see section IV above, “Obligation to issue a formal decision”).

The SA should communicate the full decision to the complainant (including the decision of the LSA, as the case may be). It is up to the complainant to decide whether to appeal the final decision or not.

Ideal Solution

There should be an explicit obligation to notify the complainant when a decision has been taken, and to send a copy of the full decision.

There should be an obligation to mention the status of the decision/document (final, mere advice, draft, or other), that an appeal is possible and what the deadline to appeal is (see below).

Also in cross-border cases, the decision issued by the LSA (and not just a summary thereof) should be communicated to the complainant.

Proposed Solution

Concepts 9 and 11 address this issue.

Reference to specific noyb cases:

e.g. the complaint filed by La Quadrature du Net against Amazon, where the Quadrature was just informed by the French SA about the existence of the decision adopted by the LUX SA and shared a summary of it.

In one of noyb’s 101 complaints on EU-US data transfers, noyb only learned about a decision by the Italian SA because of media coverage. The SA did not inform noyb of the decision and only provided it on request.