I think the EU directive has been much influenced by the CNIL and the preexisting french laws. The CNIL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL) was very influencial 20 years ago. It has lost most of its power now, but its main results remain.
My understanding is that CNIL works/worked on data privacy issues, which does not appear to be related to the issue of reverse engineering. You might be thinking about the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications (2002/58) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Privacy_and_Electr....