3rd ICAI 2024

International Conference on Automotive Industry 2024

Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

own purposes. The conditions set there must be interpreted in light of the purpose of the regulation, which is, inter alia, to allow effective competition between independent and authorised repairers. For the third time, the CJEU commented on the application of Regulation 2018/858 in its judgment in Case C-319/22 GAH v. Scania of November 2023. Although the defendant manufacturer, Scania, made available a website to independent operators where it was possible to search for the necessary information by model, year of manufacture and (for repairers only) also by VIN of the vehicle, this had to be done manually and downloaded as a pdf file, i.e. automatic processing of data was not possible and only information on spare parts could be saved in XML format, not all the information necessary for repair and maintenance. The CJEU therefore had to comment on the technical solution for accessing the vehicle information and also on the question whether the GDPR prevented independent operators (repairers knew the VIN if the vehicle was taken to their garage) from accessing the VIN. The CJEU confirmed that all repair and maintenance information is subject to the Regulation, not just that relating to spare parts. Although the manufacturer is not obliged to create a database interface allowing automated search with downloading of results, it must in any event allow direct electronic processing of the relevant data immediately after their collection, i.e. provide the information in a format or files that allow this. The GDPR is not an obstacle to the sharing of vehicle VINs. On the one hand, a VIN becomes personal data only if, by linking it to other information, it allows the identification of a natural person (which depends, inter alia, on the time and financial costs of such identification and the technology available at the time of processing). In any event, even if an independent operator were to become a data controller on the basis of the communication of a vehicle’s VIN, Regulation 2018/858 gives it the legal title to do so, as it imposes a legal obligation on car manufacturers to provide such data to them. Based on the analysis of Regulation 2018/858 and the existing case law on it, it is possible to draw the following conclusions regarding the regime of aftermarket access to data generated by cars: • The Regulation is friendly to independent operators of the aftermarket in that it covers them all, i.e. including dealers, test and development facilities, publishers of technical information and publications, etc. and therefore does not reduce the obligations of manufacturers to their relationship with independent repair garages. • The Regulation is also accommodating in that independent operators are also legally entitled to information that the manufacturer does not provide to its authorised dealerships and repairers, i.e. the manufacturer cannot, in the name of equal treatment, refuse to provide information to interested parties on the grounds that it does not provide it even to entities “in its own network”. • Finally, the Regulation is also friendly in that it seeks to make access to information really easy to reach: easy, permanent and also remote access, easy search, download and storage, timeliness and completeness of information, charging of reasonable and proportionate fees, prohibition of imposing conditions

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