Analysis
Economy & Tech
How to Make Ukraine’s EU Accession Work for Central Europe
20 December 2024
The new Polish legislation was supposed to implement years-old EU standards on digital safeguards, but instead Warsaw used the moment to extend the government’s ability to monitor its populace. If passed, Poland could face another rule of law infringement.
Summary: The Polish government has proposed a new Electronic Communications Law that increases the possibility of surveillance of citizens. The Polish legislation, which was supposed to implement the EU Directive establishing the European Electronic Communications Code, is at the same time incompatible with EU law. This is, moreover, confirmed by one of the opinions presented by the government itself.
What is in the draft? The Polish authorities ignored the CJEU’s judgments on data retention and upheld the current system allowing data to be stored for potentially all citizens and for as long as 12 months. However, according to the European Court, it is not possible to treat all citizens as suspects and store their data just in case.