Bonn, 22 July 2025
Press release 11/2025
Judgment issued in fan pages case: BfDI considers further legal action
In the consolidated proceedings brought by the Federal Press Office (BPA) and Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. (Meta) against the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI), the 13th Chamber of the Cologne Administrative Court held an oral hearing on the question of the legal operation of a Facebook page ("fan page") raised by the Federal Government. Today, the court partially upheld the action and annulled the 2023 decision of the BfDI. Meta's action was dismissed on three of four points.
Prof. Dr. Indra Spiecker, Director of the Institute for Digitalization at the University of Cologne, who represents the BfDI before the court, welcomed the swift decision and the court's intensive examination of the issue during the oral hearing. The BfDI's objective in these proceedings was and remains to ensure that citizens can legally use information from public authorities on social media. Even if the outcome of the proceedings does not meet expectations, we are now one step further.
The BPA had appealed against a decision of the BfDI from February 2023, in which the BfDI had, among other things, prohibited the operation of the Facebook fan page of the Federal Government because of data protection deficiencies. Among other things, the BfDI considered the consent of users to the setting of certain cookies to be problematic. Although the decision was not addressed to Meta, the company also filed an independent lawsuit against it in 2023. The court declared this inadmissible on three of four points.
The proceedings are based, among other things, on a 2018 decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ, judgment of June 5, 2018, C-210/16 "Wirtschaftsakademie"). The highest court in the European Union ruled that Facebook is not solely responsible for compliance with data protection on its platform, but that the operators of fan pages can also be held liable for data protection deficiencies. This joint responsibility of the platform and site operators has since been consolidated and expanded by numerous other rulings at the European level (e.g., ECJ, judgment of July 10, 2018, C-25/17 "Jehovah's Witnesses" and ECJ, judgment of July 29, 2019, C-40/17 "Fashion ID"). Whether joint responsibility also existed between Meta and the BPA was a matter for the court to clarify.
I will examine the reasoning of the judgment very carefully and decide whether to refer the matter to the next higher instance, the Münster Higher Administrative Court, for a decision. Prof. Dr. Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider, BfDI
The BfDI is aware that many authorities in Germany have been waiting for answers from these court proceedings in order to align their own social media strategies in compliance with the law. Proceedings are still pending in some federal states, for example in Saxony but also in other European countries.