MINISTERS’ DEPUTIES

Decisions

CM/Del/Dec(2024)1514/H46-32

5 December 2024

1514th meeting, 3-5 December 2024 (DH)   H46-32 Bucur and Toma v. Romania (Application No. 40238/02) Supervision of the execution of the European Court’s judgments   Reference documents CM/Notes/1514/H46-32

 

Decisions

The Deputies

1.         recalled that the violations found relate to the disclosure by the first applicant, a military officer in the Romanian Intelligence Service, of information on wide-scale illegal telephone tapping on the part of the intelligence service and of the content of some of the communications thus intercepted, including telephone conversations at the home of the second and third applicants;

2.         recalled also that the remaining questions under the Committee’s supervision concern the measures still needed to guarantee non-repetition of the violations of Articles 8 and 13 due to the lack of sufficient safeguards in the national legislation governing secret surveillance based on national security considerations, an issue which first came to the Committee of Ministers’ attention more than two decades ago, in Rotaru v. Romania;

3.         noted with interest that the draft legislation aimed at reinforcing the safeguards surrounding the collection and retention of personal data within the framework of activities related to national security, currently pending in Parliament, embeds in the domestic legal framework data protection principles which correspond to minimum safeguards under the Convention and the Court’s relevant case-law, and that it provides for a mechanism of ex post facto judicial review of secret surveillance based on national security considerations; noted also that this draft legislation raises some points of concern and uncertainty, outlined in the Secretariat’s analysis set out in document H/Exec(2024)16;

4.         called on the authorities to take all necessary steps to ensure that the measures adopted in the framework of the ongoing reform efforts will lead to a national security legislation that fully and effectively complies with the requirements of Articles 8 and 13 of the Convention resulting from the Court’s relevant judgments; invited them in this context to provide clarifications on the outstanding issues identified in document H/Exec(2024)16;

5.         again strongly encouraged the authorities to make full use of the expertise available from the Council of Europe and request the opinion of the Venice Commission on the draft legislation and any subsequent amendments thereto; also encouraged them to co-operate closely with the Secretariat in the ongoing legislative process, including in order to identify good practices developed and implemented by other member States to ensure Convention-compliant secret surveillance systems, notably as regards oversight and review arrangements;

6.         invited the authorities to submit updated information on the progress of this process and on any other development by 30 June 2025 and then to keep the Committee regularly informed; decided to resume consideration of this case, in the light of the information received, at one of their Human Rights meetings in 2026.