Key Points

• Compliance with data protection legislation shall be subject to control by an independent authority, also for the judiciary. However, in order to safeguard the independence of the judiciary, both the General Data Protection Regulation and the Law Enforcement Directive explicitly state that national Data Protection Authorities are not competent to supervise courts ‘when acting in their judicial capacity’.
• In this article, the notion of ‘courts acting in their judicial capacities’ is analysed to determine whether any common understanding of this notion exists. Apart from legal analysis, empirical research (survey and interviews) was carried out in 30 countries (27 EU and 3 EFTA EEA Member States).
• The concept of ‘courts acting in their judicial capacity’ can be contrasted with ‘courts not acting in their judicial capacity’ (the functional interpretation) or with ‘other organizations’ (the institutional interpretation).
• The functional interpretation is followed by most countries and in fairly similar ways. The institutional interpretation is followed by some countries, but in very different ways and some practices raise concerns, such as limited or no supervision for the judiciary (interfering with Article 8 of the Charter) and supervision of the judiciary by the ministry of justice (potentially interfering with the separation of powers according to the trias politica).
• Altogether, there is to a large extent a common understanding of the notion of ‘courts acting in their judicial capacity’ and this is the functional interpretation. The institutional interpretation, however, may lead to a gap in data protection supervision of the judiciary.

中文翻译：

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes？欧盟和欧洲经济区成员国司法部门的数据保护

关键点

• 对数据保护立法的遵守应受独立机构的控制，司法机构也是如此。然而，为了保障司法机关的独立性，《通用数据保护条例》和《执法指令》均明确指出，国家数据保护机构“在以司法身份行事时”无权监督法院。
• 在本文中，对“以司法身份行事的法院”的概念进行了分析，以确定是否存在对该概念的任何共同理解。除法律分析外，还在 30 个国家（27 个欧盟和 3 个 EFTA EEA 成员国）进行了实证研究（调查和访谈）。
• “以司法身份行事的法院”的概念可以与“不以司法身份行事的法院”（功能解释）或“其他组织”（机构解释）进行对比。
• 大多数国家都遵循功能解释，而且方式非常相似。一些国家遵循机构解释，但以非常不同的方式和一些做法引起关注，例如对司法机构的监督有限或没有监督（与宪章第 8 条相冲突）和司法部对司法机构的监督（可能干涉三权分立）。
• 总而言之，对于“以司法身份行事的法院”这一概念在很大程度上存在着共识，这就是功能解释。然而，制度解释可能会导致司法部门在数据保护监督方面的空白。