Why did the European Court of Justice annul the old deal?
It said the Commission had been wrong to give the deal a basis in the body of EU law dealing with the internal market. It said the data was used for security reasons rather than commercial reasons, and should therefore be founded on the body of law dealing with co-operation between member states in justice and home affairs. The case was taken to the court by the European Parliament, but the court did not examine the MEPs’ complaints about violation of privacy. A side-effect of the court’s ruling, changing the legal basis of the agreement, is that the parliament no longer has the power to vote it down.
