It follows from the foregoing considerations that the requirement of independence that has to be satisfied by the authority entrusted with carrying out the prior review referred to in paragraph 51 of the present judgment means that that authority must be a third party in relation to the authority which requests access to the data, in order that the former is able to carry out the review objectively and impartially and free from any external influence. In particular, in the criminal field, as the Advocate General has observed, in essence, in point 126 of his Opinion, the requirement of independence entails that the authority entrusted with the prior review, first, must not be involved in the conduct of the criminal investigation in question and, second, has a neutral stance vis-à-vis the parties to the criminal proceedings.

the answer to the third question referred for a preliminary ruling is that Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58, read in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 11 and Article 52(1) of the Charter, must be interpreted as precluding national legislation that confers upon the public prosecutor’s office, whose task is to direct the criminal pre-trial procedure and to bring, where appropriate, the public prosecution in subsequent proceedings, the power to authorise access of a public authority to traffic and location data for the purposes of a criminal investigation.

  In the light of all the foregoing considerations, the answer to the questions referred is that Article 5 of Directive 77/249 must be interpreted as meaning that:–        it does not preclude, as such, in the light of the objective of the proper administration of justice, a lawyer, provider of representation services in respect of his or her client, from being required to work in conjunction with a lawyer who practises before the judicial authority in question and who would be responsible, if necessary, towards that judicial authority, under a system placing lawyers under ethical and procedural obligations such as that of submitting to the judicial authority in question any legal element, whether legislative or case-law-based, for the purposes of the proper course of the procedure, from which the litigant is exempt if he or she decides to conduct his or her own defence;–        the obligation for a visiting lawyer to work in conjunction with a lawyer who practises before the judicial authority in question, in a system in which the latter have the possibility of defining their respective roles, the sole purpose of the lawyer who practises before the judicial authority in question being, as a general rule, to assist the visiting lawyer to ensure the proper representation of their client and the proper fulfilment of his or her duties to that judicial authority is not disproportionate, in the light of the objective of the proper administration of justice;–        a general obligation to work in conjunction with a lawyer who practises before the judicial authority in question which does not allow account to be taken of the experience of the visiting lawyer would go beyond what is necessary in order to attain the objective of the proper administration of justice.