Company agreements: flat-rate control bans are not permitted

Often, works councils try monitoring measures to prohibit a flat-rate. However, such and similar flat passages in company agreements must now be examined and adapted.

The European Court of Justice concluded in a judgment that flat-rate control bans are fundamentally contrary to European law, since the applicable law provides for a mandatory balance of interests. If the interest, the fundamental right or basic freedom of the person is not concerned, personal data may be processed.

The claimant had visited various Internet sites of the German Confederation. Therein, the accesses, their time, keywords, etc., were saved within the scope of protection measures such as the defense of attacks and the prosecution of attackers. He filed a complaint with which the Federal Republic of Germany should be prohibited from saving the IP address of its host system “over the end of access to generally accessible websites for online media services of the Federal Governments‘ institutions, or to save it by third parties, as long as in the event of a fault the storage is not required to restore the availability of the telemedia.“ The unlawfulness of flat-rate control bans also means that the general ban on access to private e-mails from employees falls.

In this context, regulations in company agreements and employment contracts should therefore be reviewed against this background.

Source: curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf