Art. 27 GDPR · Chapter IV: Controller and processor · Section 1: General obligations
Article 27 GDPR: Representatives of controllers or processors not established in the Union
Text as of 28 October 2026 Reviewed by Sergio Maldonado Elvira on 29 October 2026
Summary (not the official text)
A controller or processor not established in the Union, to which Article 3(2) applies, must designate in writing a representative in the Union, except in the cases listed in paragraph 2.
Official text
Where Article 3(2) applies, the controller or the processor shall designate in writing a representative in the Union.
The obligation laid down in paragraph 1 of this Article shall not apply to:
processing which is occasional, does not include, on a large scale, processing of special categories of data as referred to in Article 9(1) or processing of personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences referred to in Article 10, and is unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons, taking into account the nature, context, scope and purposes of the processing; or
a public authority or body.
The representative shall be established in one of the Member States where the data subjects, whose personal data are processed in relation to the offering of goods or services to them, or whose behaviour is monitored, are.
The representative shall be mandated by the controller or processor to be addressed in addition to or instead of the controller or the processor by, in particular, supervisory authorities and data subjects, on all issues related to processing, for the purposes of ensuring compliance with this Regulation.
The designation of a representative by the controller or processor shall be without prejudice to legal actions which could be initiated against the controller or the processor themselves.
Source: Regulation (EU) 2016/679, Official Journal L 119, 4.5.2016, as corrected. Only the text published in the Official Journal is authentic. © European Union, https://eur-lex.europa.eu
Text as of 28 October 2026.
This is reference material, not legal advice.
Related recitals
This list is under review.
EDPB guidance
- Guidelines 3/2018 on the territorial scope of the GDPR (Article 3)
EDPB 03/2018FinalFirst published 23 November 2018Final version 12 November 2019
Fines
Amounts are shown in the currency in which the fine was imposed.
- Clearview AI, Inc: EUR 20,000,000
Hellenic Data Protection Authority, GreeceDecision of 13 July 2022Appeal status: unknown
Facial recognition company processed people's images in Greece unlawfully, without transparency, ignored an access request and had no EU representative.
- Clearview AI: EUR 20,000,000
Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, ItalyDecision of 10 February 2022Appeal status: unknown
Facial-recognition firm scraped billions of facial images, including of people in Italy, with no legal basis, without transparency, and without an EU representative; ordered to delete Italian data and stop collecting it.