DPC publishes statistical report on handling of cross-border complaints under GDPR's One-Stop-Shop (OSS)
15th March 2022
The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has today published a statistical report on the DPC’s handling of cross-border complaints under the GDPR’s One-Stop-Shop (OSS) mechanism.
Since May 2018, the DPC has received and concluded a significant number of cross-border complaints as the EU/EEA lead supervisory authority for the large number of technology and internet platform companies with EU headquarters in Ireland.
The DPC’s handling of these cross-border complaints has been the subject of public commentary, most often based on information that is incomplete and lacking context. In the interests of accountability, transparency and informed debate, the published report gives a fact-based overview of the DPC’s cross-border complaint handling processes and the associated statistics, including, the number of complaints received, numbers concluded, and outcomes achieved.
For the majority of cross-border complaints it receives, the DPC is responsible for dealing with them as the EU/EEA lead supervisory authority for the organisations concerned. The DPC also receives a number of complaints from individuals about organisations where another EU/EEA data protection authority is the lead. In these cases, the DPC transfers the complaints to the relevant authority via the OSS mechanism.
The report illustrates that in the period 25 May 2018 to 31 December 2021:
- 1,150 valid cross-border complaints have been received by the DPC; 969 (84%) as lead supervisory authority (LSA) and 181 (16%) as a concerned supervisory authority (CSA).
- 588 (61%) cross-border complaints handled by the DPC as the LSA were originally lodged with another supervisory authority and transferred to the DPC.
- 65% of all cross-border complaints handled by the DPC as the LSA since May 2018 have been concluded, with 82% of those received in 2018 and 75% in 2019 now concluded.
- Of the 634 concluded cross-border complaints handled by the DPC as the LSA, 544 (86%) were resolved through amicable resolution in the interests of the complainant.
- 72 (22%) open cross-border complaints are linked to an inquiry and will be concluded on the finalisation of the inquiry. A large number of the remaining open complaints from 2018 and 2019 are linked to an inquiry.
- 86% of all cross-border complaints handled by the DPC as the LSA relate to just 10 data controllers.
- 38% of complaints transferred by the DPC to other EU/EEA LSAs (excluding the UK) have been concluded.
For more recent statistics, please see the Data Protection Commission statistical report on handling of One-Stop-Shop (OSS) cross-border complaints for 25 May 2018 to 19 September 2022.