{"id":5446,"date":"2025-07-09T12:30:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T12:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lusis-avocats.com\/?p=5446"},"modified":"2025-07-09T12:30:53","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T12:30:53","slug":"right-of-access-to-an-employees-personal-data-employers-can-be-required-to-pay-compensation-if-they-fail-to-take-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lusis-avocats.com\/en\/right-of-access-to-an-employees-personal-data-employers-can-be-required-to-pay-compensation-if-they-fail-to-take-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Right of access to an employee\u2019s personal data: employers can be required to pay compensation if they fail to take action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Court of cassation, Labor Div., 18 June 2025, no. 23-19.022<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following the termination of his employment contract, an employee request access to e-mails sent or received via his work email account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The company sent him various other documents (such as, for example, his end-of-contract documents).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the matter was referred to the lower courts, they ordered the company to pay damages for failure to comply with the provisions of Articles 15 and 4 of the GDPR relating to the right of access to personal data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The company appealed to the French Supreme Court, arguing that emails and sent or received by employees as part of their duties cannot constitute personal data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, this was not the position taken by the French Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After recalling the provisions of Articles 4 and 15 of the GDPR, it expressly confirmed that :<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Emails sent or received by employees through their professional email address are personal data under Article 4 of the RGPD,<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Employees haves the right to access these emails: the Court specified that the employer must then provide them with both the metadata (timestamp, recipients), and their content, unless the elements whose communication is requested are of a nature to infringe the rights and freedoms of third parties.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The Court adopted the terminology used on the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL)\u2019s website. For the CNIL, the rights of third parties include intellectual property rights and business secrecy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Court&#8217;s view, an employer&#8217;s failure to comply with these obligations without providing any justification is a breach of the employee\u2019s rights, resulting in damages to be assessed at the discretion of the lower courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Court of cassation, Labor Div., 18 June 2025, no. 23-19.022 Following the termination of his employment contract, an employee request access to e-mails sent or received via his work email account. The company sent him various other documents (such as, for example, his end-of-contract documents). When the matter was referred to the lower courts, they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Right of access to an employee\u2019s personal data: employers can be required to pay compensation if they fail to take action - Lusis Avocats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lusis-avocats.com\/en\/right-of-access-to-an-employees-personal-data-employers-can-be-required-to-pay-compensation-if-they-fail-to-take-action\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Right of access to an employee\u2019s personal data: employers can be required to pay compensation if they fail to take action - Lusis Avocats\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Court of cassation, Labor Div., 18 June 2025, no. 23-19.022 Following the termination of his employment contract, an employee request access to e-mails sent or received via his work email account. The company sent him various other documents (such as, for example, his end-of-contract documents). 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