Brussels, 06/04/2011 (Agence Europe) - In a fairly rare event, the European Commission on Wednesday 6 April went so far as to call on the Court of Justice to apply financial penalties against Sweden, as the country has still not transposed the directive on data conservation (2006/24/EC) into its national law, despite a first ruling of the Court dated 4 February 2010 (C-185/09) instructing it to do so.
In January, Sweden indicated that it expected to be able to come into line with the ruling in mid-March, but its Parliament has now postponed the vote on the legislation transposing the directive for 12 months. The Commission decided to bring the matter before the Court a second time, proposing that it impose a daily fine of €40,947 as of the date of the second ruling until the end of the infringement, and the payment of a fixed rate of €9,597 per day for the period elapsing between the date of the Court's 2010 ruling and the date of the second ruling.
Readers may recall that the directive in question obliges telephone operators and providers of internet services to store data (numbers, email addresses, schedules, duration etc) on the traffic and location of telecommunications, in order to be able to communicate these to the national law enforcement authorities for the purposes of the fight against terrorism. It should have been transposed by no later than 15 March 2009 for data relating to communications via internet and 15 September 2007 for the other data. (F.G./transl.fl)