Brussels, 07/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 8 January, MEPs on the European Parliament's civil liberties committee will discuss the effects of the annulment by the Court of Justice of the EU of the anti-terrorism directive on data retention (telecoms) and respond to the opinion of the Parliament's legal services on the matter. The Court annulled the 2006 directive on the grounds that it breached fundamental liberties.
The question since April has been whether or not to bring forward a new directive. The Commission wants to obtain all possible clarification and work on this issue with the consent and support of the Parliament but the member states are divided. The United Kingdom, for instance, wants a new text to be brought forward, while other countries are more cautious on how to respond to the Court ruling.
That several other instruments are linked to it, in particular the proposal for a European PNR, which the Council wants the Parliament to adopt to beef up efforts to prevent Europeans going off to fight in the Middle East and to help prevent terrorist attacks, makes the fate of the directive all the more important.
The opinion drafted by the legal services relates to a number of points: Community law, transposition of the directive by the member states and national provisions outside of directives. It confirms that transposition measures (Germany, for example, refused to transpose the text) may be open to question as to their legality and proportionality in relation to the e-privacy directive which is still in force and which contains provisions on the retention of personal data in certain circumstances.
The opinion indicates that the Court ruling does not automatically invalidate the other anti-terrorist instruments that are in force, such as international PNR agreements. However, while these instruments may be presumed to be legal, they may be considered case-by-case and found to be illegal in light of the Court ruling. The opinion states that any pending European legislation (such as the European PNR) and any on-going international negotiation may prove difficult to conclude if it does not embrace the principles set out by the Court.
On 8 April, the Court annulled the directive on the retention of telecoms data that allowed operators to store their users' telephone data (for periods of between eight and twenty four months). This 2006 directive constitutes a large-scale and particularly serious breach of the fundamental rights of privacy and protection of personal data, in the view of the Court. (SP)