The EU and the USA agree in principle on a new data protection agreement

BRSSEL (dpa-AFX) – The EU and the USA have agreed in principle on a successor to the “Privacy Shield” overturned by the European Court of Justice for the transfer of personal data. This was announced by EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and US President Joe Biden on Friday in Brussels. “This will enable predictable and trustworthy data flows between the EU and the US and ensure the protection of privacy and civil liberties,” von der Leyen said.

The ECJ overturned the “Privacy Shield” for the transmission of data from Europe across the Atlantic in July 2020 on the grounds that the level of data protection in the USA did not meet EU standards. Above all, the judges criticized the far-reaching access possibilities of US secret services to data of Europeans.

In a joint statement, both sides said that new rules and guarantees would limit US intelligence access to data to what is “necessary and proportionate to the pursuit of defined national security goals.” In addition, there should be an independent legal protection mechanism that could investigate complaints from Europeans about data access by the US secret services and order remedial measures.

The ECJ ruling created great legal uncertainty for companies when it came to data transfer between the USA and the EU. The Facebook group Meta has been warning since autumn that the online network and Instagram in Europe will probably have to be shut down if there is no successor plan. Accordingly, the industry association Business Software Alliance welcomed the basic agreement, as it would create legal certainty.

The “Privacy Shield” was created in 2016 after the previous “Safe Harbor” regulation had been overturned by the ECJ. In both cases, the Austrian lawyer Max Schrems sued.

Its data protection organization Noyb complained on Friday that it was initially just a political announcement and that a concrete text was still missing. If the new agreement is not in line with EU law, Noyb or another group will probably challenge this too.

/wim/DP/ngu