surveillance – Official Blog of UNIO

by Alessandra Silveira, Joana Covelo de Abreu (Editors) and Tiago Sérgio Cabral (Managing Editor)

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1. During the previous week there as been plenty of controversy regarding a proposal by the Portuguese Government to make the installation of the App “StayAway COVID” (“App”) – a mobile contact-tracing application designed to fight the pandemic – mandatory for large sections of the population. While the Government appears to have backed down from this idea (for now) the issue of European Union Law (“EU Law”) has been surprisingly absent from most of the debate around a measure of this nature, even though it should be front and centre and precedes even the issue of constitutionality.

As we will show in this text, it is difficult to argue against the conclusion that this subject should be considered as a matter of EU Law – and, consequently, that this is a question of fundamental rights protected by the European Union (“EU”). In the EU’s legal framework, privacy and personal data protection are fundamental rights enshrined within Article 16 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU and Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (CFREU). Since it is a matter regulated at EU level, the EU’s standard of fundamental rights’ protection is applicable before and above even the national constitutional standards of protection^[i]. So, this is not just a Portuguese constitutional problem that can be solved in the light of the Portuguese Constitution – it is an issue of relevance to all European citizens which needs to be resolved in the light of the EU´s (jus)fundamental standards (see Article 51 CFREU).^[ii] It is important to be aware that the Court of Justice of the EU (“ECJ”), in the past, struck down constitutional provisions from Member States to ensure the adequate protection of fundamental rights of privacy and personal data protection^[iii]. This is because all Member States do not have the same level of (jus)fundamental protection.

2. Under the current legal framework in the EU, enforcing the use of any contact-tracing application to the general public (or to large sections of the general public such as the entire population inserted within the labour market, academia, schools and public administration) would always face some serious challenges.

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