Facts
- Finnish law made certain individual tax information publicly accessible, including earned and unearned income and taxable net assets.
- Satakunnan Markkinapörssi Oy collected residents’ tax data from government sources and published the data in Veropörssi in extensive lists organized by name and locality.
- The newspaper publication focused on residents whose annual income exceeded a set threshold (reported in the record as roughly 10,000–13,500 euros).
- In 2002, Veropörssi published tax data concerning about 1.2 million individuals (roughly one-third of Finland’s taxable persons at the time), across multiple issues that each covered a particular geographic area.
- Satamedia Oy reused the published data by offering it through a commercial SMS service: users texted a person’s name (and municipality) and received that person’s income and assets information in reply.
- Following complaints and regulatory attention, the Finnish Data Protection Ombudsman sought to prohibit the companies’ large-scale processing and redistribution of the tax data under Finland’s Personal Data Act (implementing EU data-protection rules in Directive 95/46/EC).
- Domestic proceedings moved through Finnish data-protection bodies and administrative courts. The Supreme Administrative Court requested a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union on whether the activities constituted “processing of personal data” and how the “journalistic purposes” derogation applied.
- After receiving CJEU guidance, the Supreme Administrative Court ordered that the companies be prohibited from processing and transferring the tax data in the manner and to the extent used in 2002, including forwarding it to the SMS service.
- The companies applied to the European Court of Human Rights, alleging that the restrictions violated Article 10 (freedom of expression) and that the length of the domestic proceedings violated Article 6 § 1 (reasonable time). They also raised Article 14 in conjunction with Article 10.
Issues
- Whether Finland’s prohibition on the applicants’ large-scale processing, publication, and SMS distribution of identifiable taxpayers’ income and assets data violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
- Whether the overall duration of the domestic proceedings breached Article 6 § 1’s requirement that cases be determined within a reasonable time.
Decision
- The Grand Chamber found an interference with Article 10 but held, by 15 votes to 2, that there was no violation because the interference was lawful, pursued the legitimate aim of protecting the rights of others (taxpayers’ private life and personal data), and was necessary in a democratic society.
- The Court accepted that taxation and transparency can involve matters of public interest, but it was not persuaded that publishing the tax data en masse (and offering name-based SMS retrieval) materially advanced public debate in a way that outweighed the privacy impact on the large number of affected individuals.
- The Court treated the large scale, systematic nature, and easy retrieval of the data (including through the SMS service) as factors that significantly increased the impact on private life, even though the underlying tax information was formally public.
- The Court gave weight to the domestic authorities’ assessment, made within the EU data-protection framework, that the applicants’ 2002 processing and redistribution went beyond what was justified as processing for journalistic purposes.
- The Court noted the restriction was not framed as a general ban on reporting about taxation; it targeted the manner and extent of mass processing and the forwarding of the data to the SMS service.
- The Court found a violation of Article 6 § 1 because the domestic proceedings lasted too long (over eight years) given the relevant circumstances.
- The Court did not find it necessary to examine the Article 14 complaint separately from its Article 10 analysis.
Legal Principles
- Publishing and disseminating personal data can fall within Article 10, but may be limited under Article 10 § 2 when limits are prescribed by law, pursue a legitimate aim (including protection of others’ rights under Article 8), and are proportionate.
- The fact that information is publicly accessible under domestic law does not remove Article 8 interests; large-scale republication and simplified retrieval can intensify the interference with private life.
- In conflicts between freedom of expression and privacy/data protection, the Court examines whether domestic authorities struck a fair balance, including: the contribution to a matter of public interest, the nature of the information, the scale and method of dissemination, and the severity and scope of the restriction.
- States may be granted a wide margin of appreciation in balancing Article 8 and Article 10 where the case concerns personal-data processing and the application of data-protection rules to modern forms of distribution.
- Under Article 6 § 1, “reasonable time” is assessed in light of the case’s complexity, the conduct of the parties and authorities, and what was at stake; excessive overall duration can breach the Convention even where the subject matter is complex.
Conclusion
The Grand Chamber held that Finland could, consistently with Article 10, prohibit the applicants from processing and redistributing identifiable taxpayers’ income and assets data on a mass scale and through an SMS retrieval service, because the restriction pursued privacy and data-protection aims and was proportionate; however, the Court also held that the domestic proceedings took an unreasonable time in breach of Article 6 § 1.