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In those circumstances, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following question to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling: ‘In the light of Articles 7, 8 and 11 and Article 52(1) of the [Charter], on the one hand, and of Article 6 of the [Charter] and Article 4 [TEU], on the other hand, is Article 15 of Directive [2002/58] to be interpreted as precluding national legislation which obliges providers of publicly available electronic communications services to retain traffic and location data of end users of those services where: (1) that obligation does not require a specific reason in terms of location, time or region, (2) the following data are the subject of the retention obligation in the provision of publicly available telephone services – including the transmission of SMS, multimedia messages or similar messages and unanswered or unsuccessful calls: (a) the telephone number or other identifier of the calling and called parties as well as, in the case of call switching or forwarding, of every other line involved, (b) the date and time of the start and end of the call or – in the case of the transmission of a short message, multimedia message or similar message – the times of dispatch and receipt of the message, and an indication of the relevant time zone, (c) information regarding the service used, if different services can be used in the context of the telephone service, (d) and also, in the case of mobile telephone services (i) the International Mobile Subscriber Identity of the calling and called parties, (ii) the international identifier of the calling and called terminal equipment, (iii) in the case of pre-paid services, the date and time of the initial activation of the service, and an indication of the relevant time zone, (iv) the designations of the cells that were used by the calling and called parties at the beginning of the call, (e) in the case of internet telephone services, the Internet Protocol addresses of the calling and the called parties and allocated user IDs, (3) the following data are the subject of the retention obligation in the provision of publicly available internet access services: (a) the Internet Protocol address allocated to the subscriber for internet use, (b) a unique identifier of the connection via which the internet use takes place, as well as an allocated user ID, (c) the date and time of the start and end of the internet use at the allocated Internet Protocol address, and an indication of the relevant time zone, (d) in the case of mobile use, the designation of the cell used at the start of the internet connection, (4) the following data must not be retained: (a) the content of the communication, (b) data regarding the internet pages accessed, (c) data from electronic mail services, (d) data underlying links to or from specific connections of persons, authorities and organisations in social or ecclesiastical spheres, (5) the retention period is 4 weeks for location data, that is to say, the designation of the cell used, and 10 weeks for the other data, (6) effective protection of retained data against risks of abuse and against any unlawful access to those data is ensured, and (7) the retained data may be used only to prosecute particularly serious criminal offences and to prevent a specific threat to a person’s physical integrity, life or freedom or to the continued existence of the Federal Republic or of a Land, with the exception of the Internet Protocol address allocated to a subscriber for internet use, the use of which data is permissible in the context of the provision of inventory data information for the prosecution of any criminal offence, maintaining public order and security and carrying out the tasks of the intelligence services?’