Brussels, 12/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 11 June, the Belgian Constitutional Court repealed the legislation in force on the retention of personal data, following the judgment of April 2014 of the European Court of Justice on the 'data retention' directive (see EUROPE 11056).
The directive on the retention of personal data, which was adopted in the wake of the attacks on Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005, brought in an obligation upon telecommunications operators to retain data on telephony and Internet use (not the content of the communications, but the origin, destination, time and equipment used) of their clients for six to 24 months, to allow the law-enforcement services to access them in order to combat terrorism.
In its judgment, the Court of Justice found that the directive was not limited to what was strictly necessary and seriously violated fundamental rights. The Belgian Constitutional Court took this judgment as its basis in repealing a law dating from July 2013 requiring the retention of telephony and electronic communications data. The Belgian court felt that it ran counter to the principles of equality, non-discrimination and right to privacy.
The Belgian state did not spontaneously call this law into question after the judgment, which was returned in April 2014. It was the French and German-speaking Order of the Belgian Bar which brought the matter before the Belgian court, arguing a violation of lawyers' professional secrecy, as well as the Human Rights League and the Liga voor de Rechten van de mensen, which criticised this violation of the citizens' right to privacy, according to media reports in the kingdom.
The Belgian law required fixed and mobile telephony service providers and Internet access providers to retain data on traffic, location and identification for periods of up to twelve months. This obligation of retention, however, did not apply to the content of the communications. Ireland, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and, now, Belgium have repealed their laws following the European Court's judgment, according to the specialist website NextInpact. (Solenn Paulic)