Europol gets an exception to the legislation that allows it to keep data of people without criminal links for longer, but that is not to the liking of the watchdog that has to monitor the privacy rules at European institutions.
The EDPS, the EU Data Protection Supervisor, is going to the European Court to remove rules that give Europol more freedom to process citizens’ personal data. Concretely, this concerns two amendments that have been in force since 28 June.
Until then, when collecting data from citizens, Europol had to check whether those citizens had links to criminal activities within six months. If not, that data must be deleted by January 4, 2023 at the latest.
The amendments allow that data may also be stored afterwards. EDPS argues that Europol thus retroactively legalizes its own activities and disregards the previous recommendations of the EDPS. That is why it is now taking legal action to prevent that.
