GDPR: the right to obtain a ‘copy’ of personal data means that the data subject must be given a faithful and intelligible reproduction of all those data

Judgment of the Court (First Chamber) in Case C-487/21 | Österreichische Datenschutzbehörde and CRIF - 4 May 2023

On those grounds, the Court (First Chamber) hereby rules:

1. The first sentence of Article 15(3) of 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),

must be interpreted as meaning that the right to obtain from the controller a copy of the personal data undergoing processing means that the data subject must be given a faithful and intelligible reproduction of all those data. That right entails the right to obtain copies of extracts from documents or even entire documents or extracts from databases which contain, inter alia, those data, if the provision of such a copy is essential in order to enable the data subject to exercise effectively the rights conferred on him or her by that regulation, bearing in mind that account must be taken, in that regard, of the rights and freedoms of others.

2. The third sentence of Article 15(3) of Regulation 2016/679

must be interpreted as meaning that the concept of ‘information’ to which it refers relates exclusively to the personal data of which the controller must provide a copy pursuant to the first sentence of that paragraph.