Judgment Approved by the court for handing down. Davis & Ors v SSHD telecommunications services and thereby amounts in itself to an interference with the exercise of the applicant’s rights under Art.8 irrespective of any measures actually taken against them.” 85. In paragraphs 58 and 59 of Digital Rights Ireland the Court was not indicating that communications data can only be retained if they relate to particular geographical areas, or to particular individuals likely to be involved in serious crime. It was identifying the width of the Directive, which imposed no limits on the power to retain. But the Court was not, as we read the judgment, purporting to lay down any particular limitations on that power, as opposed to conditions of access. To have done so would, apart from being to some extent impracticable, have been inconsistent with the Court’s clear conclusion in paragraph 44 of the judgment that “the retention of data for the purpose of allowing the competent national authorities to have possible access to those data…..genuinely satisfies an objective of general interest.” 86. Counsel for the Secretary of State reminded us that in Ireland v European Parliament and Council the CJEU had held that the provisions of the Data Retention Directive were “essentially limited to the activities of service providers”, and did not govern or seek to harmonise provisions on access to data or the use thereof by the police or judicial authorities of the Member States, such matters being excluded from the Directive (paragraphs 80 and 83). Accordingly, Mr Eadie submitted, it is beyond the scope of EU law to lay down minimum provisions for a data access regime, and in Digital Rights Ireland the CJEU cannot have been intending to do so. 87. We do not know whether the CJEU in Digital Rights Ireland agreed with all that their predecessors had said about the Data Retention Directive in Ireland v Parliament. The previous decision is referred to and considered in detail in the Opinion of Advocate General Cruz Villalón in Digital Rights Ireland (see paragraphs 42-46, 81-88, 121 & 124). Yet in the judgment of the Court it is not even mentioned. It seems to us quite extraordinary that in the second case to consider (albeit in different respects) the validity of the same Directive the CJEU said nothing about its reasoning in the first such case, decided only five years earlier. 88. What is clear, however, is that in Digital Rights Ireland the CJEU held that the Directive was invalid; that it infringed the principle of proportionality in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 52(1) of the Charter; and that it failed to provide sufficient safeguards against unlawful access to and use of retained data by public authorities. Paragraphs 57-59 of the judgment concern retention; but paragraphs 60-67 of the judgment concern access. Mr Eadie did not submit that the latter are simply to be discarded or ignored. It was not clear to us how, on the Secretary of State’s case, those paragraphs of the judgment are to be treated. 89. The solution to the conundrum, in our view, and the ratio of Digital Rights Ireland, is that legislation establishing a general retention regime for communications data infringes rights under Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter unless it is accompanied by an access regime (laid down at national level) which provides adequate safeguards for those rights. Was the Court laying down any (and if so what) specific minimum requirements for compatibility with EU law?