Brussels, 16/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - After the Home Affairs Council on Thursday 12 March, European Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos explicitly ruled out a new European directive on data protection, more specifically telecommunications data.
A first draft of the legislative text, dating from 2006, requiring telephone/internet operators to retain their clients' communications data for up to two years was annulled by the Court of Justice of the EU in April 2014 on the grounds that the case for it had not been sufficiently well made and it breached fundamental rights (see EUROPE 11056).
“There'll be no new directive”, stated Avramopoulos, who, at the end of 2014, had been very guarded on how to respond to the Court ruling without ever ruling out a new directive. The member states may present or re-present legislation on the retention of telecoms data. The Netherlands did so recently but a Dutch court also threw out the text on the basis of the principles laid out by the Court of Justice (see EUROPE 11272). At European level, national laws may even today be confronted by the only directive which raises the principle of personal data retention and the conditions under which this infringement of individual rights may be justified, experts said last year in the aftermath of the Court ruling - the e-privacy directive.
The draft directive on the retention of European air passenger information (PNR) for the purposes of combatting terrorism is still being debated in the European Parliament. The Commission is of the view that, as it stands, and assuming that it is well drafted, it complies with the Court of Justice judgment on the retention of telecoms data. It stated this position in a letter to the Parliament (see EUROPE 11273). MEPs had requested this in February in a resolution on terrorism. They also asked the Commission to seek the views of independent experts from the security, law enforcement and intelligence services on the need to retain passenger information. A meeting will be held on 18 March, the Commission said on Monday. (Solenn Paulic)