Recording or transcribing a meeting in Germany and the EU

At a glance

What the GDPR asks

A recording or a transcript of what people said is their personal data. Article 6 sets out the lawful bases for processing it, of which consent is one and legitimate interests another, and Article 13 says the people it is collected from must be told, “at the time when personal data are obtained”, who is collecting it, why and on what basis, who receives it, how long it will be kept, and their rights. Where processing is likely to be high risk, particularly with new technologies, Article 35 requires an impact assessment first.

Article 88 lets each country set more specific rules for employees’ data, by law or by collective agreement, so the rules for recording staff differ from one EU country to the next.

Germany: the privacy of the spoken word

Section 201 of the German Criminal Code (StGB) punishes whoever, without being authorised to do so, “makes an audio recording of the privately spoken words of another”, in the words of the official English translation, with up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine. It also covers using such a recording or making it available to somebody else, and listening in with a device to words that were not meant for you. An attempt is punishable, and the offence is prosecuted only on request.

The statute does not define what counts as authorised or non-public, and it does not say whether live transcription that never stores the audio is recording. Treat it as if it is: ask everybody whose words will be captured before you start, and stop if anybody says no.

Germany: works councils

Under section 87(1) no. 6 of the Works Constitution Act (BetrVG), a works council has a right of co-determination over “the introduction and use of technical devices designed to monitor the behaviour or performance of the employees”. The Federal Labour Court reads “designed to” as objectively able to collect or record information about employees’ behaviour or performance, whatever the employer intends, and held in 2024 that a headset system was covered even though nothing was recorded or stored.

So an employer that introduces an AI note taker in a company with a works council very likely needs the works council’s agreement first, and section 90 obliges it to inform the works council in good time about planned work processes, including the use of artificial intelligence.

Germany: employees’ data and § 26 BDSG

Section 26 of the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) still says employees’ data may be processed where the employment relationship needs it. After the Court of Justice of the EU ruled in Case C-34/21 that national rules which only repeat the GDPR are not valid more specific rules, the Federal Labour Court held in 2023 that the first sentence of section 26(1) does not meet the GDPR’s conditions. Employers should rely on a lawful basis in Article 6 of the GDPR instead.

A works agreement can set the rules for a note taker, but the Court of Justice held in Case C-65/23 that such an agreement must itself meet the GDPR, and that a court can review whether the processing it allows is necessary.

The EU AI Act

Since 2 February 2025 the AI Act has banned AI systems that infer the emotions of people in the workplace or in education, except for medical or safety reasons. The European Commission’s guidelines say it covers emotions inferred from signals such as a person’s voice, face or way of typing, not from what they wrote, and give as an example of what is prohibited AI monitoring the emotional tone of hybrid video calls from the participants’ voices and images.

The Act’s transparency rules in Article 50 apply from 2 August 2026. The Commission’s guidelines place transcription tools outside the duty to tell people they are interacting with AI, so the duty to tell the people in a meeting that it is being transcribed comes from the GDPR, not the AI Act.

Using Troopa in the EU

Troopa keeps the transcript and the notes, not the audio, and keeps no voiceprint. It runs on your computer and shows the other people on the call nothing unless you present its window, so telling them is up to you, and in many places the law requires it. It does not infer anybody’s mood, emotions or engagement.

Under the GDPR an organisation using Troopa is the controller of its meetings and TELLME AI LIMITED is its processor, under a data processing agreement. An organisation that chooses the EU region has its meetings stored in Frankfurt. We do not use your meetings to train or improve AI models, ours or anybody else’s.

Questions

Sources

1. GDPR, Article 6: the lawful bases for processing
2. GDPR, Article 13: what people must be told when their data is collected
3. GDPR, Article 35: data protection impact assessments
4. GDPR, Article 88: processing in the context of employment
5. § 201 StGB: violation of the privacy of the spoken word (German text)
6. German Criminal Code, section 201, official English translation
7. § 205 StGB: prosecution only on request
8. § 87 BetrVG: the works council’s right of co-determination
9. Works Constitution Act, section 87, official English translation
10. Federal Labour Court, 1 ABR 16/23 (16 July 2024), the headset system
11. § 90 BetrVG: informing the works council, including about AI
12. § 26 BDSG: data of employees
13. Court of Justice of the EU, Case C-34/21 (30 March 2023)
14. Federal Labour Court, 1 ABR 14/22 (9 May 2023), on § 26 BDSG
15. Court of Justice of the EU, Case C-65/23 (19 December 2024)
16. EU AI Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689: Articles 5 and 50
17. European Commission, guidelines on prohibited AI practices (2025)
18. European Commission, guidelines on the transparency obligations of Article 50 (2026)

Read on 6 October 2026, by the people who make Troopa. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it and say when.