A Member State’s police may decide to retain the biometric and genetic data of a person facing criminal charges or suspected of committing a criminal offence, ruled the Court of Justice of the European Union in a judgment delivered on Thursday 20 November (case C-57/23).
In the Czech Republic, a civil servant suspected of having committed a criminal offence complained that identification measures (taking fingerprints, genetic profiling, taking photographs, writing a description of his person) had been taken by the police, in accordance with the Law on the Czech Police, and that these data had been stored. He claims that this constitutes unlawful interference in his private life.
The police have appealed against the decision of the Czech Supreme Administrative Court ordering them to delete the data.
In its judgment, the Court of Justice holds that Directive 2016/680, which provides a framework for competent authorities to process personal data for the purposes of preventing and detecting criminal offences, does not preclude national legislation which allows for the indiscriminate collection of biometric and genetic data from a person charged with or suspected of having committed a criminal offence.
However, the Court sets out two conditions: (1) the purposes for which the data is collected must not require a distinction to be made between these two categories of persons; (2) data controllers must comply with all the principles and specific requirements (non-excessive and secure data processing, storage for no longer than necessary - Articles 6 and 10 of the Directive) applicable to processing sensitive data.
Furthermore, the Court is of the opinion that a Member State may authorise police forces, under certain conditions, to retain biometric and genetic data on the basis of their internal rules. If national regulations provide for time limits for periodically verifying the need to retain data, they are not obliged to provide for a maximum retention period.
See the judgment of the Court of Justice: https://aeur.eu/f/jkh (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)