Will obtaining the employee's consent to visibility of private routes be taken into account during a possible inspection, and what about equality between the parties — employer and employee (subordinate)?
ANSWER
As a rule, it is recommended either not to use company cars for private purposes or, if such use is permitted, to use functionality enabling switching between business/private driving mode so that private journeys are not monitored. If however company cars are made available also for private purposes without the possibility of disabling GPS monitoring outside working hours, the employee's explicit, voluntary consent may be regarded as an appropriate legal basis for processing.
Knowing about the monitoring, the employee may use the company car for private purposes and consciously accept processing of their location data outside working hours, or knowing about such monitoring may refrain from using the company car for private journeys. It should be noted that employee consent as a legal basis for processing in the employer–employee relationship is in fact often questioned (due to doubts as to its voluntariness on the part of a person who is in some way dependent on and subordinate to the employer), but in the case analysed here full voluntariness of consent may in fact be preserved.
