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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

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The Dutch Parliament has lowered the data retention term in its implementation of the Data Retention directive to 12 months. The law has still to pass the Dutch Senate, which has been more critical of data retention in the last four years. A lot is still unclear about the law and many concerns, like the absence of evidence for the resulting interference with the right to private life and private communications, have not been adequately addressed yet. Still, the legislature will try to finalize the law before the summer break of the Parliament.

Interestingly, the three-party coalition forming the present Government was split into three camps, arguing for 6, 12 and 18 months

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The new Communications Data Bill proposed by the Home Office has met the opposition of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) which has shown concerns related to the proposals of building one Government-owned database with records of phone calls, email and Internet use in the UK.

In ICO's opinion, the action is not justified. "If the intention is to bring all mobile and internet records together under one system, this would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the state to hold every UK citizen's phone and internet records. (...) We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable. We have warned before that we are

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Czech Parliament is close to approving the data retention implementation as an Act amending the Electronic Communications Act (127/2005 Coll.). Due to the early introduction of the data retention obligation in the text of the 2005 Act, the current amending draft law implementing the data retention directive is more specific.

EDRi-member IuRe intended to take the opportunity to amend the Act in order to respect privacy. IuRe prepared a set of amendments aiming to shorten the retention period to 6 months (currently one year), to include data that are subject to retention into the text of the Act (currently the data are specified only in a Minister regulation, so it can be modified without

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The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) has filed its complaint with the Constitutional Court requesting an ex post examination for unconstitutionality and the annulment of the data retention provisions of Act C of 2003 on electronic communications.

On 15 March 2008, the regulations implementing the 2006/24/EC Directive on data retention entered into force in Hungary. Act C of 2003 on electronic communications did not need much amendment since it already comprised numerous restrictive data retention provisions prior to the directive. The only changes of the amendments were the retention of Internet communications data and the elimination of the lax - but at least pre-defined - legal

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An announcement on 19 May 2008 by the UK government may herald the next step in governmental attempts to grab hold of traffic data. Despite the strongly negative reactions against the EU data retention directive, which governments must transpose into national law by 15 March 2009, the UK government (which has been a key driver of data retention) now demands even more.

Gordon Brown wants all traffic data - itemised phone bills, mobile phone records and Internet traffic logs - to be collected and stored in a central government database. The plan, which appeared in Monday's Times, has been criticised by the opposition as `more of a threat to our security than a support' while the privacy regulator said that

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European Digital Rights (EDRi) has joined other 42 civil liberties NGOs and professional associations in signing the amicus curiae brief initiated by German NGO Working Group on Data Retention (Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung).

The action is destined to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in relation to the action started on 6 July 2006 - Ireland vs. Council of the European Union, European Parliament (Case C-301/06). The brief is asking ECJ to annul the EU directive on data retention pointing out that apart from the formal grounds put forward by Ireland, the directive is, most of all, illegal on material grounds.

According to the document, data retention violates the right to respect for

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The Federal German Constitutional Court issued a preliminary decision on 19 March 2008 in the case supported by 34 000 people against the German implementation of the data retention directive. The preliminary ruling has considered that parts of the act are unconstitutional pending review.

The decision does not prohibit the electronic communication companies to gather the data, but limits its use, explaining that the retained data can be transferred to law enforcement authorities only in cases of serious crimes and with a judicial warrant.

The data shall be made available only in prosecuting or judging serious crime cases when other evidences are not accessible or are not enough. At