Policy Observatory

The Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) ruled on 16 September 2014 that a law that required the mandatory registration of all prepaid SIM cards and free WiFi users, is unconstitutional, as a whole. The Court reviewed the law as a result of the Romanian Ombudsman’s objection concerning its possible unconstitutionality. Several human rights NGOs asked the Ombudsman in July 2014 to notify the CCR regarding the law which had been recently adopted, and to ask the Court to rule on the law’s constitutionality before its promulgation by the President.

As previously reported in the EDRi-gram, the Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) ruled in its decision no. 440 on 8 July 2014 that the second Romanian data retention law (no. 82/2012) was not constitutional. The full reasoning for this was published in the Official Journal on 4 September 2014 in Romanian. EDRi-member ApTI is working on the translation of the text, and an English version will follow soon.

On 11 of February 2015, Italian Constitutional Court starting to review the landmark case regarding the constitutionality of the Italian Communication Authority’s (‘AGCOM’) Regulation on Online Copyright Enforcement. AGCOM granted itself copyright enforcement power without any previous Parliamentary debate.

Consumer’s and small business associations (Altroconsumo, Movimento di difesa del Cittadino, Assoprovider and Assintel) filed action against this Regulation for violation of civil and fundamental rights (freedom of expression and to be informed  and economic initiative), protected by the Italian Constitution, before the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio and then before Constitutional Court.

Judging that the new bill contains provisions incompatible with the EU Fundamental Rights Chart, a number of deputies plan to the refer to the European Commission.

Following two actions for annulment brought independently, the Belgian Constitutional Court ruled yesterday against the mass collection of communications metadata. This ruling falls in line with a recent ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidating the directive behind Belgian law.

Finally, the Spanish Constitutional Court has sided with the Government and declared unconstitutional the Catalonian digital canon, a tax that the local Government (Generalitat) was charging to the Internet Service Providers operating in Catalonia.