EU and US reach agreement on sending data from citizens to the US

The European Union and the United States have reached an agreement on a new framework for forwarding data from European citizens to the US. In 2020, the EU Court scrapped the original Privacy Shield framework.

The European Union and the United States report that they have reached a provisional agreement on rules regarding transatlantic data flows. “The framework enables predictable and reliable data flows between the EU and the US, while safeguarding privacy and civil rights”, reports Ursula von der LeyenPresident of the European Commission.

US President Joe Biden said the rules would “re-authorize transatlantic data flows that facilitate $7.1 billion in economic relations.” The parties have been working on the agreement in recent months. Details about the new framework are not yet announced.

In mid-2020, the European Court of Justice ruled that the then Privacy Shield framework of rules on data exchange was in violation of the GDPR privacy regulation. The EU court ruled that the transfer of personal data to a third country must be accompanied by adequate data protection, comparable to the guarantees in that GDPR.

US legislation is said to provide insufficient protection for personal data, with explicit reference to US surveillance programs. An ombudsman appointed by the European Commission was deemed insufficient by the Court. Since then, companies have had to rely on ‘standard contractual clauses’ when transferring data from European data to the US.