Summary of the Swedish Data retention law

On March 18 2015, telephone and internet operator Tele2 will have the data retention law tried in the Administrative Court of Appeals (“kammarrätten”) in Stockholm. Through this we will probably learn whether DLL, the Swedish implementation of the data retention directive, is to be tried in the EU court or not.

In a 2014-10-23 ruling by the Administrative Court (“förvaltningsrätten”) in Stockholm it was found that Swedish rules for data retention do not contradict neither the constitution, nor EU legislation, nor the EU convention. A summary of the ruling (PDF, Swedish) reads:

The administrative court finds that the EU courts ruling should be interpreted in such a way that the data retention directive has been nullified since the deficits found in the directive, in a cumulative assessment, means that the directive does not meet the requirement for proportionality that the European Union law imposes regarding restrictions in freedoms and rights (the right to respect for privacy and domesticity and the protection of personal data).

At present 10 out of 28 EU countries have chosen to either not implement the directive, or implement it but having it overturned in the respective country’s constitutional court.

DFRI has been critical (Swedish) of both the directive and the Swedish implementation, since we opine that it violates fundamental human rights. Below is an incomplete summary of events until today. See also Dataskydd.net’s timeline of the different data retention laws in Europe.

  • March 18, 2015: The administrative court of appeals in Stockholm, Sweden, decides whether the Swedish data retention law will be referred to the European Court of Justice, or not.
There is also an ongoing case in Poland but it is unclear when it will be finished.

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