Advocate General Laila Medina of the Court of Justice of the European Union proposed on 1 October 2026 that a person baptised as a child may, in principle, require a church to delete his personal details from a baptismal register unless the church demonstrates compelling legitimate grounds. In Case C-12/25, Bisdom Gent VZW v Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit, the opinion also holds that striking a name through while leaving it legible does not amount to erasure.

What did the advocate general propose?

The opinion, delivered in Luxembourg, answers five questions referred by the hof van beroep te Brussel (the Brussels Court of Appeal). It runs to 212 numbered points and 160 footnotes. Its central position: neither religious communities nor their current or former members are "above the law or beneath its protection."

According to press release No 139/26, the proposal has five parts:

• Scope. The General Data Protection Regulation applies. A baptismal register holds a "structured" set of personal data and therefore counts as a filing system under Article 4(6). Church autonomy does not change that.
• Lawfulness. Processing before a withdrawal request "could be regarded as lawful" under the legitimate-interest basis in Article 6(1)(f), even without express consent.
• Objection. A person may, in principle, request erasure under Article 17(1)(c) by formally objecting. The church may continue only if it demonstrates "compelling legitimate grounds" under Article 21(1).
• Archiving. Where that fails, the church may still invoke Article 17(3)(d) and Article 89(1), provided processing is necessary, safeguarded and respects data minimisation.
• Meaning of erasure. Striking data through while leaving it legible "does not constitute erasure under the GDPR."

The weighing itself sits with Brussels. Medina wrote: "it is for the national court to make that complex case-by-case assessment."

What triggered the dispute?

The complainant, identified as JM, was baptised on 26 June 1955 in the Parish of Bijloke in Ghent. By letter of 25 March 2021 he asked Bisdom Gent VZW, the Catholic diocese, to delete any reference to him from every register or archive. The diocese recorded his departure on 2 April 2021, striking the data through but keeping it legible, and wrote on 7 April 2021 that his withdrawal had been noted.

JM was not satisfied. On 14 April 2021 he repeated the request and lodged a complaint with the Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit (GBA), Belgium's data protection authority. By Decision No 169/2023 of 19 December 2023, the authority's Disputes Chamber found the diocese had infringed multiple GDPR provisions and ordered compliance within 30 days. Bisdom Gent appealed, and the Brussels court referred five questions to Luxembourg.

The case drew 18 joined parties. Written observations came from the diocese, six individuals, the GBA, the Czech, French, Italian, Latvian, Hungarian, Austrian and Romanian governments, and the European Commission.

Why does the meaning of erasure matter?

Bisdom Gent argued that its marginal annotation amounts to material erasure. Medina disagreed. The everyday meaning of "erasure" is "deletion, removal, obliteration," she wrote, and the annotation is at most a rectification under Article 16. The right to rectification targets accuracy; the right to erasure targets being forgotten. The annotation added new personal data to the register and will be kept.

The diocese added that deletion would falsify history. The opinion rejects that logic: it would make almost any erasure a falsification of a past event. The right does not entitle a person to remove all traces of baptism either. Information that a baptism occurred "can lawfully be maintained." Data minimisation decides what stays.

JM accepted that pages need not be cut out. The opinion suggests opaque stickers over relevant data. "Basic difficulties in identifying those methods cannot excuse the controller," Medina wrote.

What happens next?

The press release stresses that the opinion does not bind the Court of Justice. Judges began deliberations after delivery, and judgment will follow at a later date; no date has been published. A preliminary ruling then returns to the national court, which resolves the dispute in line with the answer and binds other national courts facing the same issue. The CJEU follows Advocate General opinions in the majority of cases, including Medina's August 2025 body camera opinion, which the Court confirmed on 18 December 2025.

The complainant's position aligns with what the GBA had ordered. The diocese's position aligns with what the Brussels court must weigh.