The European Council has adopted the Directive on data retention. This follows the European Parliament's adoption of the amended draft Directive in December 2005 (see Legal update, European Parliament approves Council amendments to draft Directive on data retention) and the subsequent publication of the Directive (see Legal update, EU publishes official draft of Directive on data retention).The Directive will come into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal, and member states will then have 18 months to implement the Directive (with the option of deferring implementation of the provisions on retention of internet data for a further 18 months).