On 24th February, a new law for the civil enforcement of violations of data protection rules, specifically protecting consumers entered into force. With this new law, certain provisions of the German Act on Injunctive Relief (Unterlassungsklagengesetz – UklaG) are amended and also extended.

Previous situation
Until now, consumer protection organizations (e.g. the Federation of German Consumer Organisations – vzbv) were only able to challenge privacy policies of companies under the German Act on Injunctive Relief if the competent court acknowledged that the respective policy could be considered as general terms and conditions (see for example one press release about a recent lawsuit against Facebook, pdf). In general, certain clauses of privacy policies were therefore the aim of legal actions if these clauses deviated from the statutory provision of data protection law. If personal data were in fact processed in an unlawful way was merely the question.
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