On 24 October 2017 an opinion of ECJ advocate general Bot regarding the Wirtschaftsakademie case was made public. The opinion is interesting, amongst others because Bot argues that in this case there are three controllers: Facebook US, Facebook Ireland and also the Wirtschaftsakademie. Regarding Wirtschaftsakademie he writes in paragraph 58:

58. I conclude from the foregoing that, in circumstances such as those of the dispute in the main proceedings, the administrator of a fan page on a social network such as Facebook must be regarded as being responsible for the phase of personal data processing consisting in the collection by that social network of data relating to people who visit the fan page.

Dimitris Zografopoulos in an article on LinkedIn that he expects the ECJ judgment to be important:

The judgment of the ECJ in this Case will be of a high importance (comp. the LindqvistCase, C-101/01)).
This major Case is not merely about Facebook and the correlative powers of national DPAs. It will also clarify more the concept of ‘controller’, the practice of tracking of browsing behaviour, profiling, and the practice of behavioral advertising in regard of the rules on the lawfulness of the processing of personal data.

Steve Peers wrote an article for EU Law Analysis about this opinion,

While it is harder to regulate mice than elephants, at least these mice appear to be clearly within the geographic jurisdiction of the German regulator – and will remain so even when the GDPR is in force.

More information:

• Case C210/16, Wirtschaftsakademie Schleswig-Holstein GmbH: opinion by Bot, 24 October 2017
• Article by Steve Peers on EU Law Analysis, Who’s responsible for what happens on Facebook? Analysis of a new ECJ opinion, 3 November 2017
• Carlo Piltz, DSGVO: Zerschießt die „gemeinsame Verantwortlichkeit“ das Konzept der „federführenden Behörde“?, 27 October 2017
• Dimitris Zografopoulos on LinkedIn, ECJ, Directive 95/46/EC – Protection of Personal Data, Case C-210/16, Opinion of Advocate General: it is not only about Facebook, 25 October 2017