[hwh]

Just a quick background - that is the EU legislation that made the "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" in Germany appear on the political agenda. The comment shortly stating "not in Germany" however is partly right. The Data Retention Directive applies to Germany, too.

To explain this further, one needs to know how EU legislation works. As it is a supranational state conglomerate, a lot of its legislation is not immediately binding. This is how "EU Directives" differ from "EU Regulations". The latter are directly applicable, binding law. But the Directives need to be realized by EU member states doing legislation of their own. They have some degree of freedom for doing so.

Arguably, Germany didn't have the freedom to not push forward with its own realization of that Directive. However, it is disputed that the Data Retention Directive is actually conforming to EU law - and that was not checked in court yet to its full extent. So the matter is highly political in its nature. The EU Commission, which watches over the implementation of the Directives, is currently in a legal battle over sanctions regarding the non-implementation.

Germany is not alone here, however. Other EU member states postponed an implementation, too.

[eliasmacpherson]

Thanks for the explanation, I had thought it was enforced throughout the EU.

[worldimperator]

Additionally, 'not implemented in Germany' is not entirely correct. It was implemented by the Great Coalition a couple of years ago, then declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court shortly after. So all upcoming formulations of data retention will have to comply with those constitutional requirements.