Europe’s highest court has declared invalid on privacy grounds the EU Directive on retention of electronic communications data.

EU Directive 2006/24/EC harmonises the obligations on communication service providers to retain traffic, location and user identification data. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that by requiring the retention of those data and by allowing the competent national authorities to access those data, the Directive “interferes in a particularly serious manner with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data”.