Data protection case law Court of Justice

Directories of subscribers

2 preliminary rulings

Judgment of 15 Mar 2017, C-536/15 (Tele2 (Netherlands))

Article 25(2) of Directive 2002/22/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 March 2002 on universal service and users’ rights relating to electronic communications networks and services (Universal Service Directive), as amended by Directive 2009/136/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2009, must be interpreted as meaning that the concept of ‘requests’ in that article, covers also requests made by an undertaking, established in a Member State other than that in which the undertakings which assign telephone numbers to subscribers are established, which requests the relevant information possessed by those undertakings in order to provide publicly available telephone directory enquiry services and directories in that Member State and/or in other Member States.

Article 25(2) of Directive 2002/22, as amended by Directive 2009/136, must be interpreted as precluding an undertaking which assigns telephone numbers to subscribers, and which is obliged under national legislation to request those subscribers’ consent to the use of data relating to them for the purposes of supplying directory enquiry services and directories, from differentiating in the request for those subscribers’ consent to that use according to the Member State in which the undertakings requesting the information referred to in that provision provide those services.

Judgment of 5 May 2011, C-543/09 (Deutsche Telekom)

Article 12 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) must be interpreted as not precluding national legislation under which an undertaking publishing public directories must pass personal data in its possession relating to subscribers of other telephone service providers to a third-party undertaking whose activity consists in publishing a printed or electronic public directory or making such directories obtainable through directory enquiry services, and under which the passing on of those data is not conditional on renewed consent from the subscribers, provided, however, that those subscribers have been informed, before the first inclusion of their data in a public directory, of the purpose of that directory and of the fact that those data could be communicated to another telephone service provider and that it is guaranteed that those data will not, once passed on, be used for purposes other than those for which they were collected with a view to their first publication.


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