Following the recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) judgment finding that public access to ultimate beneficial ownership registry information seriously violates the right to privacy and the protection of personal data (previous coverage), both Luxembourg and the Netherlands have decided to temporarily suspend access to their respective UBO registers (RBE in Luxembourg). English-language notices on the matter from each country are as follows:
Notice to the public
Following the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 22 November 2022, access to the RBE website via the internet is temporarily suspended. A solution allowing access to the RBE data by professionals as defined in Article 2 of the amended Law of 12 November 2004 on the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing will be communicated shortly.
Joint statement by the Ministry of Justice and LBR
The Ministry of Justice and the LBR have noted with great interest the judgment of 22 November 2022 of the Court of Justice of the European Union (Grand Chamber) in joined cases C 37/20 and C 601/20, concerning two references for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU, submitted by the Tribunal d'arrondissement de Luxembourg (Luxembourg) by decisions of 24 January 2020 and 13 October 2020.
The judgment, the content of which has just been made public, must obviously be analysed in greater detail.
At this stage, it is important to note that the judgment ruled in relation to Directive 2018/843 itself by deciding that its provision that information on beneficial owners of companies incorporated in the territory of the Member States should be accessible in all cases to any member of the general public is invalid. The decision of partial invalidation therefore relates to the provision of the Directive itself and not to the transposition of the Directive into Luxembourg law, as the Luxembourg legislation is in conformity with the Directive.
However, it is clear that Luxembourg will comply with this provision, given that the problem arises in the same terms in all Member States that have transposed the Directive.
Information services for the UBO Register temporarily stopped
As of Tuesday, 22 November 2022, data from the UBO Register is no longer available to the public. As such, it is not possible to purchase a KVK UBO Register Extract at this time.
Minister Kaag of the Ministry of Finance has asked KVK to temporarily stop its information services for the UBO register. This decision was taken following a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Read the Ministry of Finance letter (in Dutch).