“Most Member States are in favour of a new legislative framework on the retention of personal communications data at EU level”, following the invalidation of the 2006 Directive in 2014, according to a note from the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU on 27 November, relayed by the Netzpolitik website.
While the Danish Presidency launched a debate in September on the type of tools that would enable police forces to improve their investigations and access more crime-related data, it notes that this support for a legislative initiative “is expressed with cautionary remarks concerning the need to incorporate elements to guarantee proportionality and necessity as well as robust safeguards against abuse”.
Some Member States insist on the limitations imposed by the Digital Rights Ireland ruling and on the need to avoid indiscriminate data retention.
With regard to the length of retention, most Member States “advocate for a duration of one year and in any event not shorter than six months. However, some Member States are in favour of longer retention periods for complex investigations or for very serious crimes, linking the retention obligations with strict conditions to access”.
According to some Member States, “retention periods should be designed as a minimum mandatory period, rather than as a maximum limit, thus allowing Member States to maintain longer retention periods where necessary”.
The 2006 directive required the retention for a period of between six months and two years of the data needed to determine the source, destination, date, time, duration, type and transmitting machine of a communication, as well as the location of the mobile communication equipment involved. It was declared invalid on 8 April 2014 by the CJEU on the grounds that it constituted particularly serious interference.
Member States have subsequently regularly requested further action from the Commission to help them improve their access to data; the European Commission has announced an impact study in 2026 and does not rule out a new legislative initiative (see EUROPE 13652/31).
Link to the note: https://aeur.eu/f/jxt (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)