The European Commission announced a new data transfer pact with the United States on Monday, which seeks to end legal uncertainty affecting thousands of companies that transfer personal data across the Atlantic.
However, the move was immediately criticized by the nonprofit group noyb, led by privacy activist Max Schrems, which said it would challenge the deal.
The Commission and the United States had been scrambling to reach a new agreement after Europe’s highest court struck down two previous pacts that supported the transfer of personal data across the Atlantic for services ranging from cloud infrastructure to payroll and banking. .
The EU executive said the measures taken by the United States ensured an adequate level of protection for the personal data of Europeans transferred across the Atlantic for commercial use.
He said new binding safeguards, such as limiting US intelligence access to EU data to what is “necessary and proportionate” and the creation of a Data Protection Review Tribunal for the Europeans, address concerns raised by Europe’s highest court.
EU chief justice Didier Reynders said he was confident he would fend off any legal challenge.
“The principles of the data privacy framework are sound and I am convinced that we have made significant progress that meets the requirements of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union,” he told a news conference.
“I am very confident in fighting, defending the new data agreement.”
Schrems said the latest review was inadequate.
“Simply announcing that something is ‘new’, ‘robust’ or ‘effective’ is not enough before the Court of Justice. We would need changes to US surveillance law to make this work,” he said in a statement.
“We already have several options for a challenge in the drawer, although we are fed up with this legal ping-pong. We currently expect this to go back to the Court of Justice early next year,” Schrems added.
The DigitalEurope lobby group, whose members include Airbus, Amazon, Apple, Ericsson, Nokia, Philips and Samsung, welcomed the deal.
“Data flows support the EU’s annual €1 trillion (almost Rs. 90,75,250 crore) of service exports to the US, and this decision will give companies more confidence to do business and help our economies to grow,” said its CEO. said Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl.
Earlier this year, the EU’s privacy watchdog, the European Data Protection Board, said the latest data deal remained insufficient and urged the Commission to do more to protect the privacy rights of the Europeans.
Europe’s highest court scuttled the two previous deals after challenges from Schrems over concerns about US intelligence agencies accessing the private data of European citizens.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
