CJEU: Operators Of Facebook Fan Pages Are (Jointly) Responsible For Data Processing By Facebook

Just a few days after the "Data Protection D-Day" of May 25, 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a Judgment on June 5, 2018 with fundamental importance for companies in Europe. According to the CJEU decision, operators of fan pages on Facebook are jointly responsible with Facebook for the processing by Facebook of personal data of visitors to the fan page. The decision, which was still made under the old law, nevertheless has a direct effect on the liability of companies that are operating fan pages on Facebook and is also expected to have an impact on the responsibility of users of other platforms and services.

The proceedings were initiated by a November 3, 2011 order of the Independent Data Protection Center for Schleswig-Holstein (ULD) by which the supervisory authority had prohibited a private educational provider, Wirtschaftsakademie Schleswig-Holstein GmbH, from operating a Facebook fan page. The ULD held that data processing by