New 3-year retention rule for court query logs from land and commercial registers
A new provision (§89r) in Austria's Court Organisation Act (Gerichtsorganisationsgesetz/GOG) requires courts to store protocol data — log records of who queried the land register (Grundbuch) or commercial register (Firmenbuch) — for exactly three years and then delete them. The rule takes effect on the day after publication of BGBl. I Nr. 62/2026 and also applies to data already stored.
What changed
New §89r has been inserted into the GOG: log records created when someone queries the land register (under §6 GUG) or the commercial register (under §34 FBG) must be kept for three years and then deleted. This was introduced via the Budget Accompaniment Act 2027–2028 (BGBl. I Nr. 62/2026).
Who is affected
Courts are the primary addressees as data controllers. Anyone whose queries of the land register or commercial register are logged is indirectly affected, since their access data will be retained for a fixed period and then erased.
What to look out for
The 3-year retention obligation applies retroactively to protocol data already held before the law's publication — not just to future queries. Separately, further GOG amendments from BGBl. I Nr. 71/2026 (changes to §§26, 47c and 81) come into force on 1 January 2027.