03/02/2020 CURIA - Documents ‘Does Community law, specifically Articles 15(2) and 18 of Directive [2000/31], Article 8(1) and (2) of Directive [2001/29], Article 8 of Directive [2004/48] and Articles 17(2) and 47 of the Charter … permit Member States to limit to the context of a criminal investigation or to safeguard public security and national defence, thus excluding civil proceedings, the duty of operators of electronic communications networks and services, providers of access to telecommunications networks and providers of data storage services to retain and make available connection and traffic data generated by the communications established during the supply of an information society service?’ Admissibility of the question referred In its written observations the Italian Government submits that the statements in point 11 of the order for reference indicate that the question referred would be justified only in the event that the national legislation at issue in the main proceedings were interpreted as limiting the duty to disclose personal data to the field of criminal investigations or the protection of public safety and national defence. Since the national court does not exclude the possibility of that legislation being interpreted as not containing such a limitation, the question thus appears, according to the Italian Government, to be hypothetical, so that it is inadmissible. In this respect, it should be recalled that, in the context of the cooperation between the Court of Justice and the national courts provided for by Article 234 EC, it is solely for the national court before which the dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of the case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court (Case C‑217/05 Confederación Española de Empresarios de Estaciones de Servicio [2006] ECR I‑11987, paragraph 16 and the case-law cited). Where questions submitted by national courts concern the interpretation of a provision of Community law, the Court of Justice is thus bound, in principle, to give a ruling unless it is obvious that the request for a preliminary ruling is in reality designed to induce the Court to give a ruling by means of a fictitious dispute, or to deliver advisory opinions on general or hypothetical questions, or that the interpretation of Community law requested bears no relation to the actual facts of the main action or its purpose, or that the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it (see Confederación Española de Empresarios de Estaciones de Servicio, paragraph 17). Moreover, as regards the division of responsibilities under the cooperative arrangements established by Article 234 EC, the interpretation of provisions of national law is admittedly a matter for the national courts, not for the Court of Justice, and the Court has no jurisdiction, in proceedings brought on the basis of that article, to rule on the compatibility of national rules of law with Community law. On the other hand, the Court does have jurisdiction to provide the national court with all the guidance as to the interpretation of Community law necessary to enable that court to rule on the compatibility of national rules with Community law (see, to that effect, Case C‑506/04 Wilson [2006] ECR I‑8613, paragraphs 34 and 35, and Joined Cases C‑338/04, C‑359/04 and C‑360/04 Placanica and Others [2007] ECR I‑1891, paragraph 36). However, in the case of the present reference for a preliminary ruling, it is perfectly clear from the grounds of the order for reference as a whole that the national court considers that the interpretation of Article 12 of the LSSI depends on the compatibility of that provision with the relevant provisions of Community law, and hence on the interpretation of those provisions which it asks the Court to provide. Since the outcome of the main proceedings is thus linked to that interpretation, the question referred clearly does not appear hypothetical, so that the ground of inadmissibility put forward by the Italian Government cannot be accepted. The reference for a preliminary ruling is therefore admissible. The question referred for a preliminary ruling By its question the national court asks essentially whether Community law, in particular Directives 2000/31, 2001/29 and 2004/48, read also in the light of Articles 17 and 47 of the Charter, must be interpreted as requiring Member States to lay down, in order to ensure effective protection of copyright, an obligation to communicate personal data in the context of civil proceedings. Preliminary observations Even if, formally, the national court has limited its question to the interpretation of Directives 2000/31, 2001/29 and 2004/48 and the Charter, that circumstance does not prevent the Court from providing the national court with all the elements of interpretation of Community law which may be of use for deciding the case before it, whether or not that court has referred to them in the wording of its question (see Case C‑392/05 Alevizos [2007] ECR I‑3505, paragraph 64 and the case-law cited). It should be observed to begin with that the intention of the provisions of Community law thus referred to in the question is that the Member States should ensure, especially in the information society, effective protection of industrial property, in particular copyright, which Promusicae claims in the main proceedings. The national court proceeds, however, from the premiss that the Community law obligations required by that protection may be blocked, in national law, by the provisions of Article 12 of the LSSI. While that law, in 2002, transposed the provisions of Directive 2000/31 into domestic law, it is common ground that Article 12 of the law is intended to implement the rules for the protection of private life, which is also required by Community law under Directives 95/46 and 2002/58, the latter of which concerns the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector, which is the sector at issue in the main proceedings. It is not disputed that the communication sought by Promusicae of the names and addresses of certain users of KaZaA involves the making available of personal data, that is, information relating to identified or identifiable natural persons, in accordance with the definition in Article 2(a) of Directive 95/46 (see, to that effect, Case C‑101/01 Lindqvist [2003] ECR I‑12971, paragraph 24). That communication of information which, as Promusicae submits and Telefónica does not contest, is stored by Telefónica constitutes the processing of personal data within the meaning of the first paragraph of Article 2 of Directive 2002/58, read in conjunction with Article 2(b) of Directive 95/46. It must therefore be accepted that that communication falls within the scope of Directive 2002/58, curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=70107&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=116452) 6/9