Litigation and Personal Data: Is the Right of Access the New Article 145 of the Code of Civil Procedure?

Article published on February 27, 2024, in the Gazette du Palais -here. 

The right of access to personal data provided for under the GDPR is increasingly being misused by requesters who use it as an evidentiary tool to gather evidence for litigation, thereby circumventing the stricter requirements of Article 145 of the Code of Civil Procedure. This misuse is facilitated by a legal framework that provides very little oversight, leaving companies with no real means to oppose it and forcing them to respond within strict deadlines to requests that are sometimes massive in scale. Pending legislative action or intervention by the CNIL, companies must adopt proactive strategies, particularly by rigorously applying the principle of data minimization.