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ECHR finds Hungary’s public disclosure of tax debtors violates privacy rights – JURIST

The European Court of Human Rights Thursday ruled that Hungary’s practice of publishing information about people who owe tax payments is a violation of their fundamental rights. The Grand Chamber in the case of LB v. Hungary held, by 15 votes to 2, that there had been a violation of the right to respect for private and family life and the home—located under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.Hungarian law requires the National Tax and Customs Authority to publish the personal data of taxpayers who are in arrears. Any defaulter in excess of 10 million Hungarian forints (approximately 27,000 US dollars) is published on a list of taxpayers in debt on its website, which included names and home addresses. The applicant, a Hungarian national, complained that Hungary used this practice to publicly shame him and amounted to an attack on his reputation.The court accepted that public disclosure of tax debtors’ data could be used to improve tax adherence and provide insight into potential business partners’ fiscal situations. As such, the rationale behind the interference was legitimate. However, the court found that the publication scheme did not appropriately consider the public interest in ensuring tax discipline against an individual’s privacy rights. Further, Hungary’s Parliament gave little or no consideration to “data protection, the risk of misuse by the general public of a tax debtor’s home address, or the worldwide reach of Internet.”The court was not satisfied that the approach was “necessary in a democratic society,” or that this legislation struck a fair balance between the competing individual and public interests at stake.