Right of access to professional emails: the Paris Court of Appeal has distanced itself from the line established by the case law of the Court of Cassation and the CJEU

Paris Court of Appeal, Division 6, ch. 2, 18 december 2025, n° 25/04.270

An dismissed employee brought summary proceedings before the Employment Court (Conseil de prud’hommes), on the basis of Articles 15 GDPR and 145 of the French Code of Civil Procedure. He sought to obtain the entirety of his professional email account in order to challenge his dismissal and claim overtime pay. The Employment Court dismissed his claim, and the Paris Court of Appeal upheld this decision.

The question is whether the right of access allows individuals to obtain copies of their professional correspondence in employment litigation.

The Court based its decision on three considerations:

• The qualification as personal data: the Court held that only identifying elements (email address, name) constitute personal data, excluding the content of professional exchanges. This conflicts with the position of the Social Chamber (18 June 2025, No. 23-19.022) and to the broad wording of Article 4(1) of the GDPR.
• The purpose of the right of access: the Court rejected the request where it was motivated by the defence of legal rights, considering that such a purpose falls outside the objective of lawful processing—whereas the CJEU has clarified that access must be granted even if pursued for another purpose (CJEU, 4 May 2023, Case C-487/21, §52).
• The content and scope of the obligation: the Court of Appeal held that the disclosure of entire documents is required only where it is indispensable to enable the data subject to exercise their GDPR rights. On this point, the decision aligns with the CJEU, which sets out a requirement of indispensability for the exercise of the applicant’s rights in relation to the disclosure of documents (§74). In this case, since the employer had already provided the employee’s personal file, this condition was not met.

The decision of 18 December 2025 raises a question that the Social Chamber has only partially addressed: namely that of the indispensability test.

It should be noted that the proposed omnibus regulation, which is currently under review by the European Commission, could lead to amendments being made to the GDPR, in particular with regard to the scope of the right of access and the requirement of indispensability.