Nah. The CFREU (Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU) is binding on EU bodies, and national bodies only when they are implementing EU law. It doesn't directly bind other things national bodies do. That's the job of the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights), which is not part of the EU.

The CJEU ruling relies on proportionality and the competence of the EU to legislate what it did. We're not about to get a ruling from the ECtHR that keeping telecoms data for two years violates the ECHR.

tldr: (!mandatory) =/=> (illegal)

Some countries (such as France) shit on EU laws and prefer to pay fines with the citizen taxes. Yay.

Same here in Holland. We have an extra tax (called BPM) on all new cars. It is so high (25K on a BMW X5) we are fined by the EU every year. But it is so profitable our government pays the fine smiling.

Probably paying the fine using the BPM; thus going in a full circle.

I guess it does not work like in Germany where rulings by the Constitutional Court have the power of law.

So if they say "this law is invalid, you can't just spy on everyone", the second part of the sentence would be law from then on.

This is my understanding at least, but I am nowhere near an expert in matters of law so take it with a huge grain of salt :)

That's false.

Only the "law is invalid" part carries the force of law. The second part is just obiter dictum.

Look at http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rs20100302_1bvr025608.ht...

The four bold points after "Urteil" and before "Gründe" are the legal holding. The rest is just explaining the holding.

Not even the "Leitsätze" on top are binding in any way. But with those, at least, you can argue that the court indicated pretty clearly that it considers those sentences important, making speculation about future verdicts at least a little bit fruitful.