Laws and legal bases
European Union:
- The EU regulation on population and housing censuses entered into force on 2 September 2008.
Federal Republic of Germany:
- The Census Preparation Law 2011 entered into force on 13 December 2007.
- On 16 July 2009, the Act on a register-based census in 2011 – in brief: Census Act 2011 – entered into force. It constitutes Article 1 of the Act ordering the Census 2011 and amendments to statistical acts.
Data protection and statistical confidentiality:
- As with all official statistics, the central principle that microdata of respondents have to be kept strictly confidential applies also to censuses. Those data exclusively serve statistical purposes, they must not be passed on to private or public institutions. This is governed by the Law on Statistics for Federal Purposes.
- Additionally, the provisions of the Federal Data Protection Act apply.
- Since the population census judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court of 15 December 1983 (BVerfGe 65, 1ff), the highest German court has ruled that microdata of citizens must not be passed on by official statistics to other public authorities. Thus it is ensured that no microdata leave the protected sphere of official statistics.
For detailed information on data protection and legal bases see here.