The European Union approved a new deal governing transatlantic data transfers after it said US President Joe Biden addressed warnings from EU courts that American security agencies could unfairly access citizens’ data.
(Bloomberg) — The European Union approved a new deal governing transatlantic data transfers after it said US President Joe Biden addressed warnings from EU courts that American security agencies could unfairly access citizens’ data.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday said the EU’s executive adopted a so-called adequacy decision, allowing thousands of firms to safely ship data to the US without fear of violating EU privacy law — for the time being.
Didier Reynders, the EU’s justice commissioner, told reporters in Brussels he’s “sure” the new pact will also face a challenge at the EU’s top court, like its two predecessors, which were thrown out by judges over fears of weak privacy protections.
“Following the agreement in principle I reached with President Biden last year, the US has implemented unprecedented commitments to establish the new framework,” von der Leyen said in a separate statement. “Today we take an important step to provide trust to citizens that their data is safe, to deepen our economic ties between the EU and the US, and at the same time to reaffirm our shared values.”
Monday’s step is the latest round in a long—running saga that eventually saw Meta Platforms Inc. and thousands of other companies plunged into a legal vacuum. In 2020, the EU’s top court annulled the so-called Privacy Shield, the previous pact regulating transatlantic data flows. Businesses, large and small, move around vast amounts of information needed for everything from sales and marketing to payroll processing, meaning that legal barriers risked disrupting commerce between the EU and US.
Privacy campaigner Max Schrems has been behind the two EU court cases that ended up striking down down the bloc’s previous transatlantic data flow decisions. He’s been getting ready to challenge the latest pact as well.
“They say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” he told Bloomberg. “It seems the commission is trapped in such a political circle. We have various options for a challenge already in the drawer, even if we are equally as sick and tired of this legal ping-pong.”
The latest EU decision follows months of negotiations with the US, which last year yielded an executive order by President Joe Biden and US pledges to ensure that EU citizens’ data is safe once it’s shipped across the Atlantic. On July 3, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said the US had now “fulfilled its commitments” toward the EU.
The uncertainty at one point led Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to threaten a total withdrawal from the 27-nation EU.
In May, it was hit by a record €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) EU privacy fine and given a deadline to stop shipping users’ data to the US via a separate tool, over the same fears that EU data wasn’t safe on the US side.
–With assistance from Samuel Stolton.
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