ABSTRACT – With its judgment of 16 February 2023 in the case HYA et al., the Court of Justice of the EU “safeguarded” a controversial practice developed by some Bulgarian judicial authorities. By considering such practice in the framework of the EU Directive on privacy and electronic communications, read in the light of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Court concluded that a decision authorising telephone tapping does not need to be based on a detailed and substantiated request from the competent prosecution authority if the reasons for the authorisation can be easily and unambiguously deduced from a cross-reading of the application and the authorisation. The present piece critically analyses the reasoning of the Court, in particular in order to stress the importance of the fundamental right to private life of the individuals concerned by those measures.
