Referral C-231/22 (Belgian State, 1 Apr 2022)

Must Article 4(7) of the General Data Protection Regulation 1 be interpreted as meaning that a Member State’s official gazette – vested with a public task of publishing and archiving official documents, which, under the applicable national legislation, is responsible for publishing official documents whose publication is ordered by third-party public bodies, as they stand when received from those bodies after the latter have themselves processed the personal data contained in those documents, without the national legislature having granted the official gazette any discretion over the content of the documents to be published or the purpose and means of publication – has the status of data controller?

If the answer to Question 1 is in the affirmative, must Article 5(2) of the General Data Protection Regulation be interpreted as meaning that only the official gazette in question need comply with the data controller’s responsibilities under that provision, to the exclusion of the third-party public bodies which have previously processed the data contained in the official documents whose publication they are requesting, or are those responsibilities incumbent cumulatively on each of the successive controllers?