Judgment of the Court of Justice Grand Chamber, 22 December 2022, SpaceNet and Telekom Deutschland, C-793/19 and C-794/19

Date22 December 2022
Year2022
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IX. JUDGMENTS PREVIOUSLY DELIVERED
1. PROTECTION OF PERSONAL DATA
Judgment of the Court of Justice (Grand Chamber), 22 December 2022, SpaceNet and
Telekom Deutschland, C-793/19 and C-794/19
Link to the full text of the judgment
Reference for a preliminary ruling Processing of personal data in the electronic communications sector
Confidentiality of communications Providers of electronic communications services General and
indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data Directive 2002/58/EC Article 15(1) Charter of
Fundamental Rights of the European Union Articles 6, 7, 8 and 11 and Article 52(1) Article 4(2) TEU
In recent years, the Court has ruled, in several judgments, on the retention of and access to personal
data in the field of electronic communications.
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More recently, in the judgment in La Quadrature du net and Others,
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delivered by the Grand Chamber
on 6 October 2020, the Court confirmed its case-law arising from the judgment in Tele2 Sverige and
Watson and Others
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on the disproportionate nature of a general and indiscriminate retention of
traffic and location data relating to electronic communications. It also provided clarification, inter alia
as regards the extent of the powers conferred on the Member States by the Directive on privacy and
electronic communications with regard to the retention of such data for the purposes of safeguarding
national security, combating crime and safeguarding public security.
In the present joined cases, two requests for a preliminary ruling were submitted by the
Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court, Germany), before which the Federal
Republic of Germany brought an appeal on a point of law against two judgments which had upheld
the actions brought by two companies providing internet access services, SpaceNet AG (Case
C-793/19) and Telekom Deutschland GmbH (Case C-794/19). By those actions, those companies
challenged the obligation imposed by the German legislation
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to retain traffic and location data
relating to their customers’ electronic communications.
The doubts expressed by the referring court concern, inter alia, the compatibility with the Directive on
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read in the light of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of
the European Union (‘the Charter’)
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and of Article 4(2) TEU, of national legislation which requires
providers of publicly available electronic communications services inter alia for the purposes of
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Judgments of 8 April 2014, Digital Rights Ireland and Others (C-293/12 and C-594/12, EU:C:2014:238), of 21 December 2016, Tele2 Sverige
and Watson and Others (C-203/15 and C-698/15, EU:C:2016:970), and of 2 October 2018, Ministerio Fiscal (C-207/16, EU:C:2018:788).
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Judgment of 6 October 2020, La Quadrature du Net and Others (C-511/18, C-512/18 and C-520/18, EU:C:2020:791). See also the judgment
delivered on the same day, Privacy International (C-623/17, EU:C:2020:790), concerning the general and indiscriminate transmission of traffic
and location data.
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In that judgment, the Court held that Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002
concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and
electronic communications) (OJ 2002 L 201, p. 37) (‘the Directive on privacy and electronic communications’), as amended by Directive
2009/136/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2009 (OJ 2009 L 337, p. 11), precludes national legislation
providing for the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data for the purposes of combating crime.
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Combined provisions of Paragraph 113a(1) and Paragraph 113b of the Telekommunikationsgesetz (Law on telecommunications), of 22 June
2004 (BGBl. 2004 I, p. 1190), in the version applicable to the dispute in the main proceedings.
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More specifically, Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58.
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Articles 6 to 8, 11 and Article 52(1) of the Charter.

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