Request for a preliminary ruling from the Cour d’appel de Bruxelles (Belgium) lodged on 1 April 2022 – État belge v Autorité de protection des données

(Case C-231/22)

Language of the case: French

Referring court

Cour d’appel de Bruxelles

Parties to the main proceedings

Appellant: État belge

Respondent: Autorité de protection des données

Questions referred

Must Article 4(7) of the General Data Protection Regulation ¹ be interpreted as meaning that a Member State’s official gazette – vested with a public task of publishing and archiving official documents, which, under the applicable national legislation, is responsible for publishing official documents whose publication is ordered by third-party public bodies, as they stand when received from those bodies after the latter have themselves processed the personal data contained in those documents, without the national legislature having granted the official gazette any discretion over the content of the documents to be published or the purpose and means of publication – has the status of data controller?

If the answer to Question 1 is in the affirmative, must Article 5(2) of the General Data Protection Regulation be interpreted as meaning that only the official gazette in question need comply with the data controller’s responsibilities under that provision, to the exclusion of the third-party public bodies which have previously processed the data contained in the official documents whose publication they are requesting, or are those responsibilities incumbent cumulatively on each of the successive controllers?

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¹ Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) (OJ 2016 L 119, p. 1).