La Quadature du Net published the article The Court of Justice of the European Union condemns France’s police profiling practices on the EDRi website on the Comdribus judgment of 19 March 2026, ECLI:EU:C:2026:219.

The court does not approve of the systematic collection of biometric data by the government without safeguards:

On those grounds, the Court (Fifth Chamber) hereby rules:

1. Article 10 of Directive (EU) 2016/680 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Council Framework Decision 2008/977/JHA, read in conjunction with Article 4(1)(a) to (c) and Article 8 of that directive,

must be interpreted as precluding national legislation which provides for the systematic collection of the biometric data of any person reasonably suspected on one or more grounds of having committed or attempted to commit a criminal offence, unless it is established, first, that the national law defines the specific and concrete purposes pursued by that collection in an appropriate and sufficiently precise manner, and second, that the competent authority is required, in each individual case, to assess whether that collection is strictly necessary for achieving those purposes, so that that collection is not systematic.

2. Article 10 of Directive 2016/680, read in conjunction with Article 4(4) and Article 54 of that directive and in the light of Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union,

must be interpreted as precluding national legislation which does not lay down an obligation on the part of the competent authority to provide a sufficient statement of reasons, in each individual case, as to why it is ‘strictly necessary’, within the meaning of that provision, to collect the biometric data of a person reasonably suspected on one or more grounds of having committed or attempted to commit a criminal offence.

It may be a criminal offence for a person to refuse to cooperate with the collection of biometric data, provided that strict conditions are met:

3. Article 10 of Directive 2016/680, read in conjunction with Article 4(1)(a) to (c) and Article 8 of that directive and in the light of Article 49(3) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, must be interpreted as not precluding national legislation which allows a person to be prosecuted for and convicted of a specific criminal offence penalising that person’s refusal to allow the collection of his or her biometric data, even though that person has not been prosecuted for or convicted of the criminal offence that formed the basis of the envisaged collection of those data, provided that that collection satisfies the ‘strictly necessary’ condition within the meaning of Article 10 of the directive and that the criminal penalty imposed in that respect observes the principle of proportionality.