Consequences of the CJEU judgment on data retention

I have received questions on the consequences of the CJEU judgment on data retention for Sweden's implementation law (here you may find the Government Bill later adopted by Parliament). The CJEU ruled that the directive is in conflict with the EU Charter on fundamental rights.

Considering that the EU Charter has only been in force since 1 December 2009 there are very few previous rulings. The most relevant is the Test-Achats case which provides that in such cases the national legislator must change national legislation that is based on a directive that violates the EU Charter. The EU commission made a guide following the Test-Achats case. The present judgment on data retention differs from Test-Achats. In Test-Achats the CJEU ruled that only some of the provisions in the directive at hand violated the EU Charter, the judgment included a deadline for amending national legislation of these provisions. The present judgment on data retention lacks a deadline, at the same time the entire directive is declared invalid.

My preliminary conclusion is that the data retention directive and the implementing national legislation all are invalid.

I have consulted with Professor Jane Reichel on EU law before writing this post. However, any shortcomings relating to reasoning or conclusions should be attributed to me.

In September 2014 I will present a paper on metadata collection, which will include this judgment. Here are some of my previous writings: a longer article and a guest post at Lawfare (published in cooperation with the Brookings institution) .

Disclaimer
The preliminary conclusion provided here is intended for general information purposes only. I do not accept responsibility or liability for action taken based on this preliminary conclusion.

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