Cinema refuses cash payment. Raad van State rules on Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens s refusal to enforce despite duty of acceptance.
On July 30, 2025, the Administrative Law Division of the Raad van State (ABRvS) will consider in a court hearing whether the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP) was justified in refusing to take enforcement action against a movie theater. The cinema refused to accept privacy-friendly, cash payment when selling movie tickets. With the upcoming cash acceptance requirement, this lawsuit is extremely timely.
In 2018, Arnhem privacy activist Michiel Jonker filed a complaint with the AP about arthouse cinema Focus Filmtheater's refusal to still sell tickets at the box office for cash payment. With PIN payments, personal data is processed that makes it possible to trace afterwards which person saw which movie. In a time of increasing uncertainty about disinformation and increasing use of risk lists and AI, this has a "chilling effect." Jonker wants to be able to continue to see cinema films anonymously, while maintaining privacy.
After seven years, the highest Dutch court will now hear the case.
Much has changed in those seven years. The Corona crisis (2020-2022) made many people aware of how easily their rights and freedoms could be curtailed. The Russian invasion of Ukraine (since 2022) and internet outages (Crowdstrike in 2024, the electricity outages in Spain, Portugal and France in 2025) made it clear how important maintaining a functioning cash payment infrastructure is for national security. That infrastructure will only remain in place if it is used by many people.
Partly for these reasons, the House of Representatives passed a bill in 2024 that included a cash acceptance requirement. According to Jonker, this significantly strengthens his case: "Cash payment is very safe in this case. Soon that cinema will have to accept cash no matter what, and then it will turn out that it will be fine. As a result, such a legal acceptance requirement makes it extra clear that for a brand-new, well-housed movie theater there was never any real need to refuse cash. And if there is no such need, then there is also no legal basis for that refusal, and thus the enforced processing of my personal data is illegal. Therefore, the AP should have simply enforced it."
A special role in the case is played by the "contract" that the cinema forces on every customer in the form of general terms and conditions. According to Jonker, the arbitrary and unnecessary imposition of such a contract violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which requires a material necessity when a contract is not entered into voluntarily. Jonker explains this in a current supplement (pdf) to his earlier appeal.
