CJEU General Court Examines Europol and Eurojust Actions in SkyECC Case
- Joint Defense Team
- Sep 9
- 2 min read
Yesterday, on 9th September 2025, the General Court of the Court of Justice of the European Union held two hearings in the cases T-1180/23 and T-167/24 (see here). Those cases were started by two individuals who claim that Europol and Eurojust violated fundamental rights, which are protected by the Charter of the European Union (and other international treaties, like the European Convention of Human Rights).
In particular, the applicants argue that Europol and Eurojust were involved in the unlawful operation against the encrypted service provider ‘SkyECC’ and the subsequent use of the data obtained in that operation in different criminal cases all over Europe.
In this operation, it is undisputed that in the context of a Joint Investigation Team of France, Belgium and the Netherlands all communications of all SkyECC-users were acquired and processed, after wiretapping the servers of SkyECC. Europol played a pivotal role in this process, while Eurojust was involved in the distribution and/or coordination of the subsequent prosecutions against individuals, as the alleged users of SkyECC-devices.
Justus Reisinger argued before the court that the General Court is not only competent to rule on the actions of Europol and Eurojust in this context. He also argued that the actions in the context of this SkyECC-operation constituted (non-material) damages due to the illegality of the operation. In short, the infringement on the right of privacy of the users of Sky ECC was not justified due to the lack of judicial control (in retrospect) or even fundamental basics of proportionality and subsidiarity and the need of a foreseeable, legal basis.
In this context, as the Joint Defense Team we warmly welcome the open letter of more than six hundred scientists/ experts (see here), addressed to the members of the European Parliament and Council of the European Union, about the European initiative of ‘Chat Control’.
In court, Justus Reisinger also referred to this letter, in particular to the quote which is also relevant for an operation like SkyECC, as some sort of predecessor of ‘Chat Control’: “increasing the number of technologies (…) and making them mandatory not only does not improve on the previous proposal but increases its problems and broadens the potential negative impact of this proposed regulation on the security of the Internet and the freedom and privacy of its users.”
The decision is now up to the General Court. In one of the two cases, the hearing will be officially closed in two weeks. A specific date for the decision(s) has not been set yet.
Yesterday it was also to be noticed that the case law of the Court of Justice can be very impactful on criminal cases in the European Union. The Dutch Supreme Court ruled in another case of Mr. Reisinger (see here) that the lack of judicial control (upfront) is required for a search on a smartphone, as argued in the Landeck-case of the Court of Justice (C-548/21). The conviction based upon the results of this search was annulled and has to be done over by the Higher Court, to deal with the lack of judicial authorisation.
