EU records retention schedules
All the records retention obligations in the European Union

Know how long to store data in the 27 member states of the EU
All the information you need to confidently decide how long to store your data in all the European Union member states. The EU data retention schedules are up to date and updated frequently. Combine various country schedules to establish your global data retention schedule. All in a handy Excel format. This way, you can adjust, add or export elements to share with your IT or business. You will also be able to combine different country schedules, for example you could merge all ‘accounts and legal records’ data retention periods from your country schedules into one Excel.
Records retention topics
The EU member state data retention schedule include the following data retention periods:
- Accounts and legal records
- Tax records
- HR records
- Health and safety records
- Environmental records
- Transport records
- Personal data and privacy
- Alcohol, spirits and tobacco industry
- Automotive industry
- Critical infrastructure industry
- Financial services industry
- Healthcare services industry
- Hospitality industry
- Leisure industry
- Manufacturing industry
- Media and entertainment industry
- Professional services industry
- Real estate services industry
- Telecommunications industry


Why does records retention matter in the European Union?
The GDPR applies directly to all companies in the EU. Data retention is of key importance in order to get control over your data and comply with the GDPR. The GDPR says about data retention: “personal data may not be kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for any longer than necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed“. Companies will need to ask themselves: what is the most optimal data retention period my company could implement before it gets into trouble? Read more about the GDPR and how we can help you where your GDPR consultant can’t.
What you will learn from our EU records retention schedules
The filerskeepers EU data retention schedules contain:
- Over 38500 data retention periods that could be relevant to your company
- Information about who should keep what data, for which time period, starting when, it is a maximum or minimum period
- All with a legal reference and a link to the official legal source
- Printer friendly format, designed for A4 printing


All EU countries available
We have all EU countries available:
If you need more than a few countries
If you are active in over 10 countries both in and outside the EU, we recommend our Unlimited subscription. With Unlimited, you will receive access to all currently published retention schedules, and all new ones as well! If you are curious as to which countries we are planning to publish next, please see our roadmap. For more information about our one-off schedules and subscription models please see pricing.
About our retention schedules
filerskeepers helps companies decide which retention period to choose per system or document category. We provide our customers with insight into the legal maximum and minimum retention periods for each country relevant to them. This helps companies to justify why they are storing data and for how long.