HAMBURG (dpa-AFX) - The Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information has filed a lawsuit against HHLA for lack of transparency. The reason for this is the fundamental refusal of the municipal port logistics company to fulfill its legal obligations to provide information to the citizens of Hamburg in accordance with the Hamburg Transparency Act, the data protection officer Thomas Fuchs announced on Tuesday as part of the presentation of his activity report. He had already issued a corresponding warning to HHLA in November.

A member of the public had requested information about HHLA's business distribution plan and organizational chart. He had been denied this information on the grounds that HHLA, as a public limited company, acts purely as a private company and does not perform any public tasks.

"After Flughafen Hamburg GmbH, we now have to take legal action against HHLA so that it can be established in court once again what already applies under the law: public limited companies whose majority of shares are held by the city are also obliged to be transparent towards citizens," explained Fuchs. The lawsuit was filed with the administrative court on February 1.

According to the data protection officer, other municipal companies had also once again attracted attention for their unwillingness to comply with their duty to provide information. Energiewerke, for example, did not consider itself obliged to provide information in its district heating division. Other cases concerned hospitals that had resisted publication of their hygiene plans by the district office.

Overall, however, the number of cases in which the data protection officer was involved decreased according to the activity report: from 343 cases in the period 2020-2021 to 197 in the years 2022-2023. This is probably also due to a "slowly growing willingness on the part of public authorities to disclose information", Fuchs said./fi/DP/men