On 13 November 2025 the CJEU handed down judgment in the case of Inteligo Media SA (Inteligo) v Autoritatea Naţională de Supraveghere a Prelucrării Datelor cu Caracter Personal.
Inteligo sent newsletters to individuals who signed up to free accounts (for access to a limited number of articles in Inteligo’s online publication avocatnet.ro) and the CJEU was tasked with determining whether this is compliant with data protection law.
The CJEU held that the email addresses collected in the creation of the free account constituted contact details collected “in the course of the sale of a product or service” under the ePrivacy Directive and therefore soft-opt in could be used to send the newsletters so long as all required elements for the same are present.
The court acknowledged that whilst it was necessary that remuneration was received by Inteligo in return for the service in order for it to constitute a “sale” it did not have to be the recipient of the free account who paid for the service themselves, the cost may be factored into the price of a paid subscription. The CJEU further confirmed that if the elements for the soft opt-in are present under the ePrivacy Directive there is no need to establish a legal basis under GDPR for processing personal data in this context.
In addition, the CJEU stated that whether a newsletter is direct marketing does not solely depend on the content of the newsletter but also the purpose. In this instance the newsletter did not contain marketing content, but it did direct viewers to articles on the platform to “entice the users to access the paid content” . Only a certain number of free articles could be viewed before a user would then be encouraged to sign up to a subscription.
The judgment can be found here.
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