Judgment of the Court of Justice First Chamber, 13 March 2025, Deldits, C-247/23

• Date: 13 March 2025
• Year: 2025

7

III. PROTECTION OF PERSONAL DATA

Judgment of the Court of Justice (First Chamber), 13 March 2025, Deldit s, C-247/23

Link to the full text of the judgment

Reference for a preliminary ruling – Protection of natural p ersons with rega rd to the pro cessing o f

personal data – Regulation ( EU) 2016/679 – Article 5(1)(d) – P rinc iple o f a c cu ra cy – Art ic le 16 – Right to

rectifi cation – Article 23 – Restriction s – Data relating to gender i dentity – Da ta incorrect from the time o f

inclusion in a public register – Means of proof – Administrative practice of requesting proof of gender

reassignment surgery

Having received a request for a preliminary ruling from the Fővárosi Törvényszék (Budapest High

Court, Hungary), the Court of Justice rules on, first, whether the General Data Protection Regulation 7

requires a national authority responsible for keeping a public register t o rectify the personal data

relating to the gender identity of a natural person where those data are inaccurate and, second,

whether a Member State may, by way of an administrative practice, make the exercise of the right to

rectification of such data, contained in a public register, conditional upon the production of evidence

of, in part icular, gender reassignment surgery.

VP, an Iranian national, obtained refugee status in Hungary by relying on their transgender identity.

According to the medical certificates pro duced in support of their application, although VP was born

female, their gen der identity was ma le. Following the recognition o f their refugee stat us on th at basis,

VP was nevert heless regist ered as female in th e asylum regis ter.

In 2022, VP submitted a request to the asylum authority, on the basis of the right of rectification

enshrined in Article 16 of the GDPR, seeking (i) rectification of the entry in respect of their gender so

that it w ould state male, and ( ii) amendment of t heir forename in the asy lum register. VP annexed the

abovementioned medical certificates to that request. By decision of 11 Oct ober 2022, t hat aut hority

rejected VP’s request on the ground that VP had not proved that they had undergone gender

reassignment surgery .

VP brought an action for annulment of that decision before the referring court. In the light of the

absence, in Hungarian law, of a procedure for the legal recognit ion of a change of gender identity, and

harbouring doubts as to the scope of Article 16 of the GDPR in such a context, the referring court

asked the Court as to how that article should be interpreted.

Findings of the Court

In the first place, the Court recalls, from the outset, that, according to Article 16 of the GDPR, the data

subject has the right to obtain from the controller, without undue delay, the rectification of inaccurate

personal data concerning him or her. That provision gives specific expression to the fundamental

right enshrined in the second sentence of Article 8(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the

European Union, 8 according to which everyone has the right of access to data which has been

collected concerning him or her, and the right to hav e it rectified.

Next , Article 16 of the GDPR mu st be read in t he light, first, o f the principle of accu racy, 9 according to

which the processed data must be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date, and that every

7 Article 16 of Re gulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons

with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC ( General Data

Protection R egulation) ( OJ 2016 L 119, p. 1; ‘the G DPR’).

8 ‘the Charter’.

9 Princip le set out in Article 5(1)(d) of the GDPR.