Grand Chamber judgment concerning the Netherlands
In the case of Ships Waste Oil Collector B.V. and Others v. the Netherlands the Court held that there had been no violation of the right to respect for correspondence and no violation of the right to an effective remedy.
The case concerned the transmission of data, lawfully obtained in a criminal investigation, to another law-enforcement authority, the Competition Authority, which used those data in an investigation into the applicant company’s involvement in price-fixing.
The Court found that the transfers of data had been lawful, the procedural safeguards afforded by the domestic law were sufficient, the Dutch courts had adequately balanced the interests of the applicant companies and those of the State, and that the transfers had been necessary for the enforcement of competition law. The Netherlands had thus acted within their discretion (“margin of appreciation”).