Volker und Markus Schecke GbR and Hartmut Eifert v Land Hessen.

The website of the German Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (the Bundesanstalt) makes available to the public the names of beneficiaries of aid from the EAGF and the EAFRD, the place in which those beneficiaries are established or reside and the postcode of that place, in addition to the annual amounts received. Volker und Markus Schecke GbR, an agricultural firm (Case C-92/09), and Hartmut Eifert, a full-time farmer (Case C-93/09), applied, for the financial year 2008, to the competent local authorities for funds from the EAGF or the EAFRD. Their respective applications were approved by decisions of December 2008. In their respective actions, Volker und Markus Schecke GbR and Hartmut Eifert ask the Verwaltungsgericht (Administrative Court) Wiesbaden (Germany) to require the Land of Hesse not to publish the data relating to them. As it takes the view that the European Union rules which impose on the Bundesanstalt the obligation to publish those data amount to an unjustified interference with the fundamental right to the protection of personal data, the national court has requested the Court of Justice to examine the validity of those rules. The Court notes that the right to respect for private life with regard to the processing of personal data, which is recognised by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, concerns any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual and, second, that the limitations which may lawfully be imposed on the right to the protection of personal data correspond to those which are tolerated under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Publication on a website of data naming the beneficiaries of EAGF and EAFRD aid and indicating the precise amounts received by them constitutes, by reason of the fact that those data become available to third parties, an interference with the right of those beneficiaries to respect for their private life and to the protection of their personal data. In order to be justified, such interference must be provided for by law, must respect the essence of those rights and, subject to compliance with the principle of proportionality, must be necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest recognised by the European Union or the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others. Moreover, derogations and limitations in relation to the protection of personal data may apply only in so far as they are strictly necessary. The Court accordingly concludes that, by imposing an obligation to publish personal data relating to each natural person who was a beneficiary of aid under the EAGF and the EAFRD without drawing a distinction based on relevant criteria such as the periods during which those persons received such aid, the frequency of such aid or the nature and amount thereof, the Council and the Commission exceeded the limits imposed by compliance with the principle of proportionality. To that extent, it is thus necessary to declare invalid certain provisions of Regulation No 1290/2005 and to declare Regulation No 259/2008 invalid in its entirety. In view of the large number of publications which have taken place in the Member States on the basis of rules which were regarded as being valid, the Court accepts that the invalidity of those provisions which has thus been established cannot allow any action to be brought to challenge the effects of the publication of the lists of beneficiaries of EAGF and EAFRD aid carried out by the national authorities during the period prior to the date on which the judgment in the present cases is delivered.