Press Release: Telephone bills: data privacy need not preclude individual billing of calls, says European Court of Justice

The European Court of Justice strengthened consumers' rights in two rulings. EU data privacy rules need not prevent telephone operators from providing telephone bills that list individual calls, and there need not be any extra charge for this service, said the European Court of Justice in a judgment given on 14 September 2004. The Court upheld the European Commission's case that Austria had failed to ensure that bills for using the fixed public telephone network were itemized in sufficient detail to allow users to check individual calls. Standard itemized bills could provide a higher level of detail, at no extra cost to subscribers, it noted. The Court rejected Austria's argument that because the itemized billing provisions of Directive 98/10/EC were subject to data privacy protection, no additional levels of detail could be offered to subscribers at reasonable tariffs. Finally, the Court found that Austria had failed to provide detailed arguments supporting its assertion that bills more detailed than those currently required in Austria would infringe data protection legislation.