(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

On 1 June 2008, the first hearing by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on Ireland's action for the annulment of the directive on data retention took place in Luxembourg.

Ireland, later on joined by Slovakia, filed an action with ECJ against the European Council and Parliament in July 2006 for the annulment of Directive 2006/24/EC for data retention claiming an incorrect legal basis. The action has been largely supported by various bodies and private advocates ever since but despite the strong opposition, the European Parliament made a compromise and adopted the directive the 14 December 2007.

Unfortunately, the legal basis of the data retention directive is supported not only by the European Parliament and Council, but also by the Commission, Spain, Netherlands and EDPS, Peter Hustinx. The latter argues that Art 95 EC Treaty, the legal base used, is appropriate as the retained data would not otherwise fall under the EU Privacy Directives. Also Hustinx did not mention any aspects regarding the data retention directive & infringement of the human rights.

EDRi-member Joris van Hoboken commented on this situation: "These reasons are pragmatic and without doubt EDPS argued similarly when the Council was still pursuing a Framework Decision in the Third Pillar. The reasons why the European Parliament wanted to have data retention in the First Pillar was because they wanted to have a co-decision procedure, in which they have more powers."

However Slovakia also questioned if the present directive does not breach the rights of the individuals in respect with their personal data. It is not clear if the court will took consideration the breach of privacy by the directive, since the subject was not brought up by the main plaintiff.

Civil liberties campaigners: Communications Data Retention will be stopped (30.06.2008)
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/236/79/lang,en/

European Court of Justice in negotiations on retention of telecommunications data (only in German, 1.07.2008)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Europaeischer-Gerichtshof-verhandelt-ue...

Hearing of European Court of Justice on Data Retention Directive (1.07.2008)
http://www.jorisvanhoboken.nl/?p=167

EDRIgram - European parliament adopts data retention directive (18.01.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.1/dataretention