'Restricted' communications data retention

Parliamentary questions

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22 September 2019

E-002898-19

Question for written answer E-002898-19
to the Council
Rule 138
Patrick Breyer (Verts/ALE)

Subject: ‘Restricted’ communications data retention

In view of the ‘Conclusions of the Council of the European Union on Retention of Data for the Purpose of Fighting Crime’:

1.	Does the Council accept that data retention legislation which ‘applies even to persons for whom there is no evidence capable of suggesting that their conduct might have a link, even an indirect or remote one, with serious criminal offences’(1) and which ‘does not require there to be any relationship between the data which must be retained and a threat to public security’(2) violates EC law?
2.	Does the Council accept that merely exempting persons whose communications are subject to the obligation of professional secrecy does not, for all other persons whose communications data are to be retained, ensure that there is a ‘relationship between the data which must be retained and a threat to public security’ (3) and therefore does not satisfy the principle of proportionality?
3.	Does the Council have any evidence that crime clearance rates in Member States with data retention laws in effect are significantly higher than crime clearance rates in Member States with no data retention laws in effect?

(1)	Judgment of the Court of Justice of 21 December 2016, Tele2 Sverige AB v Post-och telestyrelsen and Secretary of State for the Home Department v. Watson et al., C‐203/15 and C‐698/15, ECLI:EU:C:2016:970, paragraph 105.
(2)	Ibid, paragraph 106.
(3)	Ibid.

Last updated: 4 October 2019