“The new EU-US personal data protection framework will ensure secure data flows for Europeans and provide legal certainty for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in a press release this Monday, July 10.
The two devices previously put in place to allow companies to transfer this data from Europeans to the United States had been invalidated due to fears of surveillance by American intelligence services, the last being the “Privacy Shield”, in 2020. These appeals to the Court of Justice of the EU were brought by Max Schrems, the Austrian privacy activist.
He also announced to take legal action again, considering that the new text did not bring any improvement in terms of the protection of the personal data of Europeans. “We already have options in the drawers for a new remedy, although we are tired of this game of legal ping-pong. We expect the case to be before the Court of Justice again early in the year. next year,” he said in a statement.
Additional guardrails
Ursula von der Leyen and US President Joe Biden had reached an agreement in principle in March 2022 on a new legal device, supposed to respond to the concerns expressed by justice. Adopted pursuant to this agreement, the new legal framework provides additional safeguards so that access by American intelligence agencies (in the name of national security) to data collected in Europe and transferred or hosted across the Atlantic, either limited to what is “necessary” and “proportionate”.
It also opens a possibility of recourse to European nationals if they consider that their personal data have been illegally collected by American intelligence. They could obtain, if necessary, the deletion or correction of this data. “The United States has made unprecedented commitments to put the new framework in place,” said the Commission President.
Digital companies have welcomed this announcement. This is “good news for the thousands of businesses, large and small, that move data across the Atlantic every day. Data flows are the foundation of Europe’s service exports. EU to the US, which amounts to 1 trillion euros per year, and this decision will give companies more confidence to conduct their business and help our economies grow,” commented Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl , the managing director of DigitalEurope, the industry lobby.