Judgment Approved by the court for handing down.
Davis & Ors v SSHD
contribute, by the retention of their data, to the prevention, detection or prosecution of
serious offences.
62.
Secondly, not only is there a general absence of limits in Directive 2006/24 but
Directive 2006/24 also fails to lay down any objective criterion by which to determine
the limits of the access of the competent national authorities to the data and their
subsequent use for the purposes of prevention, detection or criminal prosecutions
concerning offences that, in view of the extent and seriousness of the interference
with the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, may be
considered to be sufficiently serious to justify such an interference. On the contrary,
Directive 2006/24 simply refers, in Article 1(1), in a general manner to serious crime,
as defined by each Member State in its national law.
63.
Furthermore, Directive 2006/24 does not contain substantive and procedural
conditions relating to the access of the competent national authorities to the data and
to their subsequent use. Article 4 of the directive, which governs the access of those
authorities to the data retained, does not expressly provide that that access and the
subsequent use of the data in question must be strictly restricted to the purpose of
preventing and detecting precisely defined serious offences or of conducting criminal
prosecutions relating thereto; it merely provides that each Member State is to define
the procedures to be followed and the conditions to be fulfilled in order to gain access
to the retained data in accordance with necessity and proportionality requirements.
64.
In particular, Directive 2006/24 does not lay down any objective criterion by which
the number of persons authorised to access and subsequently use the data retained is
limited to what is strictly necessary in the light of the objective pursued. Above all,
the access by the competent national authorities to the data retained is not made
dependent on a prior review carried out by a court or by an independent
administrative body whose decision seeks to limit access to the data and their use to
what is strictly necessary for the purpose of attaining the objective pursued and which
intervenes following a reasoned request of those authorities submitted within the
framework of procedures of prevention, detection or criminal prosecutions. Nor does
it lay down a specific obligation on Member States designed to establish such limits.
65.
Thirdly, so far as concerns the data retention period, Article 6 of Directive 2006/24
requires that those data be retained for a period of at least six months, without any
distinction being made between the categories of data set out in Article 5 of that
directive on the basis of their possible usefulness for the purposes of the objective
pursued or according to the persons concerned.
66.
Furthermore, that period is set at between a minimum of 6 months and a maximum of
24 months, but it is not stated that the determination of the period of retention must be
based on objective criteria in order to ensure that it is limited to what is strictly
necessary.
67.
It follows from the above that Directive 2006/24 does not lay down clear and precise
rules governing the extent of the interference with the fundamental rights enshrined in
Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter. It must therefore be held that Directive 2006/24 entails
a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with those fundamental rights in