European Union – Data protection. The Court of Justice of the European Union gave a preliminary ruling, deciding, among other things, that art 15(1) of Directive (EC) 2002/58, as amended by Directive (EC) 2009/136, read in the light of arts 7, 8, 11 and 52(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, had to be interpreted as precluding national legislation governing the protection and security of traffic and location data and, in particular, access of the competent national authorities to the retained data, where the objective pursued by that access, in the context of fighting crime, was not restricted solely to fighting serious crime, where access was not subject to prior review by a court or an independent administrative authority, and where there was no requirement that the data concerned should be retained within the European Union.