Belgian DPA leadership changes and future litigation trends

What evolutions await data protection litigation & GDPR fines/sanctions in Belgium? Since Hielke Hijmans announced he is stepping down from his role as Director of the Litigation Chamber of the Belgian Data Protection Authority, hearings in ongoing cases have been pushed back until an as of yet unspecified date.

It’s unclear whether it is feasible to close within the next few weeks all cases that have been pleaded already, but I suspect that Hielke Hijmans will do all he can to do so.

Speculation is rife also (at least the very small world of lawyers with strong data protection litigation experience in Belgium + in my discussions with certain clients) as to who will become the new Director of the Litigation Chamber, and whether this someone will have purely an interim role (as foreseen under Article 66(2) of the internal procedural rules of the Belgian DPA) or a longer term one.

After all, a new Director might mean new priorities, new choices regarding which cases to prioritise and how to handle them, perhaps even new practices regarding sanctions.

Part of the challenge though is that since a 2023 modification of the law creating the Belgian DPA, the Director of the Litigation Chamber is supposed to be a *magistrate* (drawing inspiration from the Netherlands & France) – with the Belgian Parliament confirming that an exception would apply to Hielke Hijmans as he was already the President of the Litigation Chamber (= old terminology) prior to that modification.

So by requiring a judge to preside over the Litigation Chamber, the Belgian government and Parliament (or at least, the previous legislature) may have made their lives harder in the context of a resignation.

It’s not an easy process that awaits the Belgian DPA. One of the current Directors of the other services of the Belgian DPA will become acting Director of the Litigation Chamber until the job is filled… and that will require a full recruitment process that will have to meet the “magistrate” criterion too and that will end with confirmation of the selected candidate by the Belgian Parliament (if it agrees). It’s unlikely that this will be done within a couple of months.

Of course, the Parliament could also vote to scrap the “magistrate” requirement introduced during the previous legislature or an interested candidate might seek to challenge the constitutionality of that provision, but that might not make the process easier.

I at any rate look forward to seeing who takes over from Hielke Hijmans – just as it has been a pleasure to interact with him over the years in his role as President/Director of the Litigation Chamber. [Whether as one of his main critics (read my many comments on Litigation Chamber decisions over the years), as a lawyer appearing before him in the context of pleadings, or as an adversary of his in appellate cases challenging the Litigation Chamber’s decisions.]

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