Brussels, 18/05/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 14 May, the European Commission stated that six Member States of the EU had been sent before the Court of Justice for failing to notify the Commission their measures to transpose the 2005 directive on the retention of telecommunication data in the fight against terrorism and crime (EUROPE 9574). The countries in question- the Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Sweden, Austria and Greece- have been referred to the Court of Justice. Additionally, 20 Member States have not submitted statistics from 2008 on the use of data by the police. "This is a reference directive. And if we cannot demonstrate the effectiveness of this directive, we will be faced with serious problems every time we need to provide the police with information", said Joaquim Nunez de Almeida, the head of the "Police Cooperation and Access to Information" unit of the European Commission, speaking at a conference entitled "Towards the Evaluation of the Data Retention Directive". By 15 September this year, the Commission must produce an assessment report on the application of the directive for the Council and the European Parliament. At this stage, the debates have shown that the police have by and large integrated the tools made available to them by the directive, particularly on the use of telephone data. The collection of Internet data, however, is not yet fully operational, particularly with the development of Web 2.0-type technologies, or applications such as Facebook and VoIP. As for the criminals, it is still possible for them to use suppliers outside the EU or encryption systems. The data storage place is also a problem, as the police authorities are sometimes obliged to use international letters rogatory to obtain data stored in another country. There is also the important question of proportionality between the collection of data and the protection of privacy. On the reimbursement of costs ascribed to the services which manage data storage, the practices differ from one country to the next, bringing about a distorsion on telecommunications market. As a result, the industry is calling for a harmonisation of the system by which the costs are reimbursed by the Member States. (B.C./trans.fl)