Irish Court allows Data Retention Law to be challenged in ECJ
19 May, 2010
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.10/data-retention-ireland-ecj
Recently, the Irish High Court ruled in favour of EDRi-member Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) allowing the civil liberties campaign group to challenge the EU Data Retention Directive at the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This is the result of four years of work by the legal team of the group.
In its action introduced in 2008 against the Ministers for Communications and Justice, the Garda Commissioner and the State, DRI claimed the defendants had illegally processed and stored data related to DRI and other mobile phone users contrary to Irish and European law. Also involved in the case was the Human Rights Commission (HRC) as adviser to the court on legal matters.
DRI claimed the European data retention directive was in breach of fundamental rights under the EU treaties, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
-------
Members of EDRi, European Digital Rights, and the press are reporting that Romanias constitutional courts are blocking Data Retention. Their decision could lead to restoration of privacy rights in the UK and across Europe.
The Romanian courts have concluded that retention of data identifying who individuals send email communications to is a breach of their fundamental right to secrecy of correspondence.
Europeans and UK citizens have this right enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2009/data-retention-rejected-by-romanias-courts
------
Currently, six Member States, Luxembourg included, have not transposed the Directive. Ireland and Greece were found to be in breach of EU law by the ECJ at the end of 2009, and Sweden in February this year. A case against Austria is pending. In Romania the national law transposing the Directive was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. A similar decision was taken in Germany and a case is pending in Hungary.
http://www.eulib.com/data-retention-commission-goes-court-against-10037