The Law Enforcement Directive - A Closer Look at the Current State of GDPR’s Counterpart

  • Panel
  • Class Room
  • Thursday 22.05 — 08:45 - 10:00

Organising Institution

FIZ Karlsruhe GmbH - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure

Germany

FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure, founded in 1977, is a non-profit organisation with approx. 340 employees (thereof 40% scientists) and a total budget of about 45 Mio. EUR. FIZ Karlsruhe is a member of the Leibniz Association, one of the major German research organisations comprising 89 research and scientific service institutions. FIZ Karlsruhe has the task to produce scientific-technical information and to provide related services. It also runs internal as well as public funded applied research projects. As an international service partner to science and business, FIZ Karlsruhe has strong expertise in handling all issues related to information transfer and knowledge management. FIZ Karlsruhe’s business segments complement each other with respect to the information offer and usage possibilities.
  • Academic 3
  • Policy 3
The Law Enforcement Directive (LED) was adopted by the European Union (EU) in May 2016 under the shadow of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). While the official legislative process for the LED started together with the negotiations for the GDPR, in reality negotiations on the LED only genuinely started during the second half of 2015. The LED has by far not achieved all its goals, but it has nevertheless paved the way towards a more coherent and comprehensive framework on the protection of personal data for law enforcement purposes at national level. In light of ongoing development of AI-driven data processing, data protection is embedded in increasingly complex legal and ethical frameworks. This panel examines the challenges of the Law Enforcement Directive in the light of political developments, recent case law and increasing use of AI in law enforcement.

Questions to be answered

  1. Is the LED equipped to tackle the challenges brought by AI?
  2. How do political and technological developments affect transposition and application of the LED?
  3. What are the effects of recent case law on the transposition and application of the LED ?
  4. What are further necessary steps to foster data protection in the area of law enforcement?

Moderator

Franziska Boehm

FIZ Karlsruhe GmbH - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure - Germany

Franziska Boehm is a law professor at the Leibniz-Institute for Information Infrastructure in Karlsruhe (FIZ) and the Karlsruhe Institute for Technologies (KIT). Before she was an assistant professor at the University of Münster (Germany). She mainly teaches IT-Law, IP-law, data protection and media law. She studied law in Germany and in France and holds a 'Licence en droit' (University of Nice, France), a Master in International Law (MJI, University of Giessen) and the German 'Staatsexamen'. After her studies, she completed her PhD at the University of Luxembourg in April 2011. The topic of her PhD relates to the EU-information sharing and data protection in the area of freedom, security and justice. It was published as a book by Springer in 2012. Her research interests currently relate to data protection, IP- and IT law.

Speaker

Eleni Kosta

Tilburg University - Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT) - Netherlands

Professor Eleni Kosta is full Professor of Technology Law and Human Rights at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT, Tilburg University, the Netherlands). Eleni obtained her law degree at the University of Athens (Greece) in 2002 and a Masters degree in Public Law at the same University in 2004. In 2005 Eleni completed an LL.M. in legal informatics at the University of Hannover (Germany) and in 2011 she was awarded the title of Doctor of Laws at the KU Leuven (Belgium) with a thesis on consent in data protection. Eleni is conducting research on privacy and data protection, specialising in electronic communications and new technologies, as well as on health law and intellectual property. She has been involved in numerous EU and national research projects.

Speaker

Teresa Quintel

European Parliament - Secretariat of the LIBE Committee - Europe

Teresa works as an administrator for the Secretariat of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) at the European Parliament. Her expertise is data protection in the area of criminal justice, and she handles the joint IMCO-LIBE Working Group on the implementation and enforcement of the AI Act.
Previously, Teresa completed her PhD at the University of Luxembourg and Uppsala University, and worked as Assistant Professor at the European Centre for Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC) at Maastricht University.

Speaker

Juraj Sajfert

DG JUST - Data Protection Unit (C.3) - Europe

Juraj is an EU official at the Data Protection Unit of DG Justice and Consumers of the European Commission. He is working on the development and application of EU data protection law for more than a decade. Juraj has been closely involved in the process of drafting and negotiating the new EU data protection legislation, particularly focusing on the Law Enforcement Directive (EU) 2016/680, the Data Protection Regulation for Union institutions and bodies and data protection rules for the European Public Prosecutors’ Office and Eurojust. He publishes regularly on topical issues for data protection in the area of law enforcement. He is also a part-time postdoctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), after defending his PhD in2024 jointly at VUB and Uni.Lu.

Speaker

Nora Ni Loideain

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London - United Kingdom

Dr Nora Ni Loideain is Director of the Information Law & Policy Centre, and Senior Lecturer in Law, at the University of London’s Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. Her research focuses on EU law, European human rights law, and technology regulation, particularly within the contexts of privacy and data protection.

She has published on topics including AI Digital Assistants, police use of facial recognition, surveillance and national security, and cross border data transfers. Her book on privacy and data protection rights and data retention law in the EU and ECHR legal orders is the first doctrinal and comparative analysis of these standards in the context of serious crime and national security: Ni Loideain, EU Data Privacy Law and Serious Crime (OUP 2025).

Nora is joint Editor-in-Chief of the leading law journal International Data Privacy Law (OUP). In 2019, she was appointed to the UK Home Office Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group (BFEG) which provides independent expert advice on the ethics and law underpinning biometrics policy development for public security and policing. In 2024, she co-authored a report on ‘The Future of Biometric Technology in Policing and Law Enforcement’ published by the Alan Turing Institute.

Prior to her academic career, Nora was a Legal and Policy Officer for the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions of Ireland and clerked for the Irish Supreme Court. She holds BA, LLB, LLM (Public Law) degrees from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a PhD in law from the University of Cambridge.