Tuesday 2 February 2016

New safe harbour agreement reached

A quick update for our readers on the legal guarantees surrounding data flow between EU and US: today, the Commission and the American government have reached an agreement that will replace the "safe harbour" agreement struck down by the CJEU last October (see our post here). The new agreement has been labelled "EU-US privacy shield". 

The deal is supposed to represent a major improvement compared to its predecessor, which, according to the Court of Justice, did not offer sufficient guarantees that the private data of European citizens would be processed in an acceptable ways once transferred to US-based companies and agencies.

According to the Commission's releases, the "privacy shield" should provide both clear rules for companies handling data and limitations on the US government's access to such data. Further, European citizens fearing that their data is being mishandled should have several remedies available.

Also this time, take a look at the Guardian's nice article on the topic for some more context.