22th June 2022 – prof. Vanessa Franssen – CJEU and Data Retention: Still in Search of Legal Certainty
Ever since the Court of Justice of the EU has annulled the Data Retention Directive in Digital Rights Ireland, there has been legal uncertainty about the compatibility of national data retention laws with the EU Charter and the e-Privacy Directive, despite a long series of judgments following Digital Rights Ireland. Most recently, on 5 April 2022, the Court reaffirmed its case law in the Irish Dwyer case (C-140/20). With several other preliminary rulings still pending, the Seminar focused on the continuing uncertainties regarding data retention, notwithstanding the Court’s highly detailed and strongly guiding rulings, and the weak spots in the current case-law based approach.
Vanessa Franssen is a Professor at the University of Liège (Belgium) and Co-director of the Service de droit pénal, de procédure pénale et de droit pénal international. Furthermore, she is Affiliated Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminal Law of the KU Leuven. She is also a guest lecturer at the University of Luxembourg and a member of the Brussels bar. She studied at the KU Leuven, where she obtained her PhD degree (2013) and at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University of Paris. Previously, she was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School (USA, 2011-2012) and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg.
