Norway’s new conservative government decided to stop work on implementation of controversial data storage laws, after the European Court of Justice declared the EU’s Data Retention Directive to be invalid.
Norwegian Prime Minister refused on Wednesday to declare an outright scrapping of Norway’s law, though, which would require telecommunications companies to store data on traffic for six months.
Prime Minister Erna Solberg and Transport Minister Ketil Solvik-Olsen have now told newspaper Dagbladet that the government is halting work on implementation of the EU directive because of the court ruling against it. The court determined the EU law, aimed at streamlining storage of information to help combat terrorism and organized crime, would have violated fundamental rights to privacy of EU citizens.
The EU directive had been approved in Norway after a compromise between Solberg’s Conservative Party and the Labour Party last year. Other parties demanded a halt to any implementation and Solberg said it already had been stopped.
newsinenglish.no staff
