{"id":71871,"date":"2026-10-28T14:18:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T12:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lhr-law.de\/?p=71871"},"modified":"2026-10-28T14:21:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T12:21:52","slug":"federal-court-kuenast-meta-cjeu-referral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lhr-law.de\/en\/magazine-en\/data-protection-law\/federal-court-kuenast-meta-cjeu-referral\/","title":{"rendered":"K\u00fcnast v Meta: Germany\u2019s Federal Court of Justice asks the CJEU who must find the copies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Illustration:Four and a half years after the first judgment, Germany\u2019s Federal Court of Justice has once again not decided the case of Renate K\u00fcnast against Meta. Instead it has asked questions \u2013 six of them, and in Luxembourg.<\/em><\/p>\n

At stake is a problem familiar to anyone who has ever tried to get a lie about themselves removed from the internet: do you have to find every copy yourself?<\/em><\/p>\n

On 27 October 2026, after an oral hearing, the VI Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) stayed the proceedings brought by Green Party politician Renate K\u00fcnast against Meta, the operator of Facebook, and referred six questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a preliminary ruling (BGH, order of 27 October 2026, case no. VI ZR 64\/24<\/a>; press release no. 204\/2026<\/a>, in German). It is the second pause in Karlsruhe. In February 2025 the Senate had already heard the case and then waited for the CJEU\u2019s ruling in Russmedia (C-492\/23<\/a>). That judgment arrived in December 2025; clarity, apparently, did not.<\/p>\n

A sentence she never said<\/h2>\n

The dispute concerns a meme, a combination of image and text. It shows a photo of Renate K\u00fcnast, her name, her party and the sentence \u201cIntegration starts with you Germans learning Turkish for once.\u201d She never said it. The image spread across Facebook in numerous variants \u2013 uploaded, shared, sometimes with an accompanying caption which, according to the findings of the lower courts, partly distanced itself from the quote and partly, unsurprisingly, added insults.<\/p>\n

K\u00fcnast reported the original meme and eight equivalent versions with their URLs, and Meta removed them one by one. The politician, however, was not content with that. She demands that Meta also remove all other identical or equivalent memes without her having to track down each URL, and claims damages for non-material harm of at least EUR 10,000. In Karlsruhe she summed it up, as reported by LTO<\/a> and beck-aktuell<\/a>, by saying that this was \u201csimply the company\u2019s job\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main (Landgericht) found entirely in her favour in 2022 (judgment of 8 April 2022, case no. 2-03 O 188\/21<\/a>); we reported on that decision at the time<\/a> (in German). The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main (Oberlandesgericht) upheld the duty to remove equivalent content in 2024 but rejected the damages claim (judgment of 25 January 2024, case no. 16 U 65\/22<\/a>). Both sides appealed on points of law.<\/p>\n

Why Karlsruhe does not simply apply German law<\/h2>\n

The lower courts resolved the case with the well-established tool of German media law: the injunction claim under Section 1004(1) sentence 2<\/a> by analogy, in conjunction with Section 823(1) of the German Civil Code (BGB)<\/a>. Under this doctrine, a hosting provider that learns of a clear infringement must also prevent repetitions that are identical in their core. That in itself is not new. As early as 2019 the CJEU held that Facebook can be ordered to search for and delete identical and equivalent comments<\/a> (in German), and the Frankfurt Regional Court later applied the same principle to Twitter<\/a> (in German).<\/p>\n

The playing field has shifted since then. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) are two European regimes that may supply additional causes of action but also new limits. When announcing the hearing, the Senate had already asked whether the claims could be based on Art. 17<\/a> and Art. 82 GDPR<\/a>, and what role the prohibition of general monitoring obligations in Art. 8 DSA<\/a> plays. According to the available reports, the Russmedia judgment classified an online marketplace as a controller under data protection law for advertisements containing personal data, even without prior knowledge. Whether that fits a social network is a question the Senate evidently regards as open.<\/p>\n

The six questions sent to Luxembourg<\/h2>\n

According to the BGH\u2019s press release, the Senate wants to know, in essence,<\/p>\n