Recently, the Berlin Data Protection Authority (Berlin
DPA) announced that it would issue a high administrative
fine for violations of the General Data Protection Regulation
2016/679 (GDPR). The announcement is available in
German on the website of the City of Berlin.
The fine will likely be a double-digit million amount of euros. The
Berlin DPA further commented that it recently imposed two fines on
one organisation in the aggregate amount of €200,000, but did
not disclose any further details of the underlying GDPR
violations.
The announcement of the Berlin DPA is a clear shift from the
previous practice of German Data Protection Authorities of issuing
much smaller fines. According to a report in the German newspaper
Welt Am Sonntag published on 12 May 2019 (available here), German DPAs imposed 81
fines in the first year post-GDPR. These fines ranged from a few
hundred euros to five-digit amounts, and totalled in aggregate
€485,490.
