necessary and appropriate to receive additional information or clarifications. All the
information gathered was taken into consideration for the analysis.
Beyond the issues identified in this report, there may be further challenges in transposition
and other provisions not reported to the Commission or future legislative and non-legislative
developments. Therefore, this report does not prevent the Commission from further evaluating
some provisions and from continuing to support Member States in the transposition and
implementation of the Directive.
2. Transposition measures
2.1 Legal definitions (Article 2 of the Directive)
Article 2 of the Directive provides legal definitions for 'information system' (a)), 'computer
data' (b)), 'legal person' (c)) and 'without right' (d)). Only CY and UK (Gibraltar) have
introduced legislation covering all aspects of the definitions listed above. In detail, this means:
a) Information system
The Directive`s definition builds on the definition of the term ‘computer system’ as provided
by Article (1)(a) of the Budapest Convention, adding computer data itself as part of the
information system. CY, EL, IE, FI, HR, MT, PT and UK (Gibraltar) have introduced
legislative provisions with the definition of an information system, while the information
provided by DE, ES, FR, LU, LV, PL, SE and SK was not conclusive. For the remaining
Member States, i.e. AT, BE, BG, CZ, EE, HU, IT, LT, NL, RO, SI and UK (except for
Gibraltar), the respective legal definitions do not specifically mention ‘computer data’. This
implies a reference to Article 1(a) of the Budapest Convention with an identical scope for the
definition of a computer system.
b) Computer data
The term ‘computer data’ is provided by the legislation of AT, BG, CY, CZ, DE, EE, EL IE,
FI, HR, LT, MT, NL, PT, RO and UK (Gibraltar), while the information provided by ES, FR,
IT, LU, LV, PL, SE, SK and UK (except for Gibraltar) was not conclusive. However, in the
case of SE, the specific set-up of the referring articles make this definition redundant. As for
the remaining Member States, HU refers the definition of computer data only to offences
described in Articles 4 and 5 of the Directive, while both BE and SI lack the inclusion of ‘a
programme suitable for causing an information system to perform a function’ in the definition
of computer data.
c) Legal person
Except for LU, which provided no conclusive information on the transposition of Article 2(c),
the transposition of the definition of ‘legal person’ did not cause any problems. This is
because, in general, it is already found in mostly civil law or commercial law provisions of
the Member States. Only CY has a specific provision in the measures adopted to transpose the
Directive.
d) Without right
As to the definition of the term ‘without right’ in Article 2(d), only CY, IE, RO and UK
(Gibraltar) notified transposition, leaving 23 Member States without any transposition
measures for this definition. However, it must be observed that in all Member States, there is
the general principle of no criminal liability for whatever action if this action is carried out
with according rights.
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