The EU executive is planning to refer Germany to the European Union's highest court over its failure to introduce a law obliging phone and internet companies to store records for at least six months:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/29/eu-dataprivacy-idUSL5E8GTE4C20120529
Having lived in Germany for 5+ years, I'm not surprised by this activity.
From a constitutional law perspective, this is an interesting one, questioning to what extent a Member State's constitution can overrule a command of the European Parliament — if the CJEU comes out with anything other than a "you must implement," it would seem to mean that, in reality, the European Parliament is subservient to local feelings, even in areas where it has competency.
ReplyDeleteConversely, Germany has already ignored an obligation made through a directive — I'm not sure why the EC would think that it would decide to follow a court order on the same issue.
One might wonder, however, just how much of the data in question here are already retained by German communications companies, for their own business purposes, and which thus might be accessible to law enforcement anyway. For example, it is highly possible that records are kept for a reasonable period of time anyway for billing / customer care purposes.
Ah but Neil there is no 'customer care' in Germany, over there it is termed a 'service desert' (literal translation). :-)
ReplyDeleteI must admit, like you I'm interested to see how this one is handled, as Germany has clearly ignored the obligation. Granted, there is a trend there that the local states ignore the federal government's edicts at times, so this may just be par for the course. However, if not resolved in the EU's favour in a timely manner, it tends to set a dangerous precedent for future disagreements. As well, I cannot help but think that this obvious defiance of the rule is indirectly connected to overall frustration at having to follow the European rules these days, such as reflected here:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2010/05/euro_crisis_6
ReplyDeleteI cannot help but think that this obvious defiance of the rule is indirectly connected to overall frustration at having to follow the European rules these days
I don't disagree — although the directive in question here was enacted about six years ago! My sense is that, for this particular directive, it's more a matter of principle about the retention of these sorts of data, given the otherwise-stringent data protection regime, than an overall push back on EU affairs — although this might not be helping matters.