Germany: Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe overturned previous decision on the compliance with GDPR

On 7 September 2022, the OLG Karlsruhe overturned the previous decision of the Public Procurement Chamber of Baden-Württemberg excluding an infrastructure provider from a public procurement on data protection compliance grounds after the provider filed an appeal against the decision. The case concerned a public procurement in which a contract was awarded to a service provider which sought to, in fulfilling the contract, engage a Luxembourg-based subsidiary of a US cloud provider to store personal data of hospital patients. In issuing its ruling, the Procurement Chamber had referenced the Schrems II ruling of the European Court of Justice on 16 July 2020, which suspends the transfer of personal data to the USA due to a lack of data protection safeguards. However, according to the OLG Karlsruhe, it can be assumed that the EU subsidiary will comply with European law and "will not follow unlawful instructions of the US parent company“ to transfer personal data to the US.