The European Court of Justice, the highest court of the EU, headquartered in Luxembourg, has decided on the cases filed in Germany and France regarding the storage of digital data.
The court ruled that data retention rules in Germany are not in line with EU law.
In the resolution, “EU law prevents the general and indiscriminate storage of traffic and location data, except where there is a serious threat to national security.” expression was used.
The court ruled that member states can only use data under strict conditions and proportionately to combat serious crimes.
The European Court of Justice has ruled that a law on mass data retention in France also violates EU law.
The court ruled that general and indiscriminate retention of digital traffic data by operators for one year cannot be a measure to combat market abuse.
Germany’s communications law required service providers to store phone and internet data for up to 10 weeks and, if necessary, hand this data over to the authorities.
Deutsche Telekom and internet company SpaceNet launched legal action against it, claiming that the application in question violated EU rules.