26.10.2020

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 359/4

(Case C-339/20)

(2020/C 359/07)

Language of the case: French

Referring court

Parties to the main proceedings

Applicant: VD

Questions referred

1.Do Article 12(2)(a) and (d) of Directive 2003/6/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2003 on insider dealing and market manipulation (1) and Article 23(2)(g) and (h) of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on market abuse, (2) which replaced that directive from 3 July 2016, read in the light of recital 65 of that regulation, not imply that, account being taken of the covert nature of the information exchanged and the fact that the potential subjects of investigation are members of the general public, the national legislature must be able to require electronic communications operators to retain connection data on a temporary but general basis in order to enable the administrative authority referred to in Article 11 of the Directive and Article 22 of the regulation, in the event of the emergence of grounds for suspecting certain persons of being involved in insider dealing or market manipulation, to require the operator to surrender existing records of traffic data in cases where there are reasons to suspect that the records so linked to the subject matter of the investigation may prove relevant to the production of evidence of the actual commission of the breach, to the extent, in particular, that they offer a means of tracing the contacts established by the persons concerned before the suspicions emerged?

2.If the answer given by the Court of Justice is such as to prompt the Cour de cassation (Court of Cassation) to form the view that the French legislation on the retention of connection data is not consistent with EU law, could the effects of that legislation be temporarily maintained in order to avoid legal uncertainty and to enable data previously collected and retained to be used for one of the objectives of that legislation?

3.May a national court temporarily maintain the effects of legislation enabling the officials of an independent administrative authority responsible for investigating market abuse to obtain access to obtain connection data without prior review by a court or another independent administrative authority?

* Language of the case: French.

(1) OJ 2003 L 96, p. 16.

(2) Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on market abuse (market abuse regulation) and repealing Directive 2003/6/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Commission Directives 2003/124/EC, 2003/125/EC and 2004/72/EC (OJ 2014 L 173, p. 1).