La Commission souhaite que les données téléphoniques soient stockées pendant une durée d'un an

A spokesman for the British EU Presidency  said on 20 September 2005: "Genuinely the most important thing is to get this in place quickly. [...] The Commission will bring out its proposal on Wednesday and we will be able to look at them side-by-side and ministers will then take a view in October."

Speaking to the European Parliament on 7 January 2005, Charles Clarke, the UK Home Secretary, said: "Communications service providers already retain much information for business purposes. But data protection obligations in some countries pressure them to erase data that has no business purpose. That means that catching a murderer or stopping a terrorist attack may depend on which mobile telephone company a victim, suspect or witness uses or has used or which EU country they were in. [...] There is perhaps a more general concern that the proposal is an unnecessary invasion into privacy or that it is disproportionate. I do not believe that it is because in many cases, some of which I have set out in the document I am circulating, the victim’s right to justice was only achieved through the retention of telecommunications data."

Speaking to the Parliament on the same day, Franco Frattini, the Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, recalled the principles of data protection: "The key concept is the assurance that only for specific objectives (the fight against terrorism and organised crime) and under the supervision of independent authorities, such as the judiciary, will data be processed for a definite period of time."

On May 31, 2005, Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding commented: "This is a question of market regulation, it can't be subject to an agreement between governments under the Third Pillar. [...] We need an impact assessment for the industry. We need the right balance not only in terms of privacy and consumer protection, but also in terms of the market."

The Parliament's Rapporteur, Alexander Alvaro,  told EurActiv: "To this date, there is no proof of evidence whether the information collected would give legal authorities an advantage in the fight against terrorism. On the one hand we risk infringing European citizens' right to privacy and on the other hand there is a danger of burdening the European telecommunications industry with the high storage costs that the proposal would invariably entail." Addressing the Parliament before the vote on the Council's draft Framework Decision, Mr. Alvaro said:  "I hope that the message we are sending out from here will be properly interpreted. We are willing to cooperate, but we also want the right procedure to be chosen. As the report shows, we believe, and the legal services believe, that this matter should be part of the first pillar of the EU Treaty, in other words one of the areas in which our Parliament engages in joint decision-making and is not merely consulted. Perhaps that can be taken on board, and perhaps we shall then be accorded the same level of respect that we give the other institutions in the course of our work."

Industry associations ECTA, ETNO, EuroISPA, GSM Europe  and ECCA  argued: "The proposed measures to impose mandatory data retention obligations would require operators to keep more types of data for longer periods than currently necessary for business purposes. Consequently significant additional investment will be needed to upgrade networks, set up systems for the collection, storage and retrieval of data, ensure the security of data, train staff, etc. The industry is also concerned over the effectiveness and technical feasibility of the proposed measures.

European Digital Rights and XS4all are united in the 'Data retention is no solution' campaign, which 47,500 people have already signed up to. They say: "Data retention is an invasive tool that interferes with the private lives of all 450 million people in the European Union. Data retention is a policy that expands powers of surveillance in an unprecedented manner. It simultaneously revokes many of the safeguards in European human rights instruments, such as the Data Protection Directives and the European Convention on Human Rights. Data retention means that governments may interfere with your private life and private communications regardless if you are suspected of a crime or not."