The Fede­ral Supre­me Court had ruled in the case sche­du­led for offi­ci­al publi­ca­ti­on that the Judgment 2C_1024/2021 of Novem­ber 2, 2022 to deal with the que­sti­on of the con­di­ti­ons under which health data must be archi­ved accor­ding to can­to­nal archi­ving law. Spe­ci­fi­cal­ly, this con­cer­ned the Sta­te Archi­ves of the Can­ton of Basel-Stadt, to which a juve­ni­le per­son­nel file of the Juve­ni­le Prosecutor’s Office of the Can­ton of BS and a pati­ent file of the Uni­ver­si­ty Psych­ia­tric Cli­nics Basel were to be transferred.

The com­plainant – the per­son con­cer­ned by both files – deman­ded that the­se files be blocked. The Fede­ral Supre­me Court, on the other hand, allo­wed their archi­ving, essen­ti­al­ly on the basis of the fol­lo­wing considerations:

  • The trans­fer of the files to the archi­ve encroa­ches on the scope of pro­tec­tion of Art. 13 BV (infor­mal self-deter­mi­na­ti­on) and Art. 8 ECHR.
  • Howe­ver, the Archi­ve Act BS as a legal basis is pre­cise enough. The Sta­te Archi­ves has dis­cretio­na­ry power in the case of archi­val value, but this is limi­t­ed by legal rest­ric­tions on access to archi­ved data and con­trol options.
  • The­re is a public inte­rest in the archi­ve, the ratio­nal hand­ling of the past, the “coll­ec­ti­ve memo­ry”, the retro­s­pec­ti­ve abili­ty to under­stand and con­trol sta­te action, and here “in the future, for exam­p­le, psych­ia­tric-histo­ri­cal” or “ana­ly­ti­cal juve­ni­le cri­mi­nal law”. The actu­al weig­hing of inte­rests, howe­ver, only takes place when archi­ve data is acce­s­sed, and the Fede­ral Supre­me Court does not want to anti­ci­pa­te this.
  • The inte­rests of the com­plainant do not pre­vail, becau­se of the access rest­ric­tions men­tio­ned (pro­tec­tion peri­ods: archi­ve data may only be used after a long time).
  • Alt­hough the files of inte­rest pre­da­te the Archi­ves Act, this non-genui­ne retroac­ti­vi­ty does not con­tra­dict the BV, espe­ci­al­ly sin­ce it is not oppo­sed by any well-acqui­red rights.