Policy Observatory
The EU Commission, in response to a freedom of information request, has released to EPIC the text of the EU-US data transfer agreement. US and EU officials finalized the so-called "Umbrella Agreement" in September, but had kept the final document secret. EPIC has filed multiple FOIA requests with US federal agencies and the European Commission to obtain public release of the document. The Agreement, alongside the Judicial Redress Act, is a key document in the aftermath of the European court decision striking down the Safe Harbor arrangement. Legal scholars who have reviewed the agreement have concluded it is deeply flawed. EPIC continues to pursue the public release of the Agreement from US federal agencies.
US Federal Trade Commission bureau director says EU national data protection authorities had only referred four privacy complaints over the 15 years life span of Safe Harbour.
Jessica Rich, bureau director at the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said European national data authorities were supposed to alert the FTC of any possible violations under the scheme but they seldom did.
In the weeks since the October 6, 2015, Court of Justice of the European Union decision that invalidated the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor framework, companies have been faced with the quandary of establishing legal alternatives for transferring personal data from Europe to the U.S.
Alternative data transfer mechanisms such as standard contractual clauses (SCCs, also called model clauses) and binding corporate rules (BCRs) were implicitly endorsed by the European Commission, but not all European countries, however, have taken this position.
On Monday, October 26, a group of German data protection authorities representing the federal government and 16 German states issued a 14-point position paper (available in German here) following the CJEU Decision.
Read about the most significant findings here.
Following the invalidation of the Safe Harbor agreement, this article offers a detailed review of consequences for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
On Monday, October 26, 2015, EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, Věra Jourová, gave a speech before the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs on the recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union that invalidated the European Commission’s Safe Harbor Decision. The EU Commissioner welcomed the Article 29 Working Party’s statement and, in particular, its support for a new Safe Harbor framework by January 31, 2016. However, the EU Commissioner called for more clarity in the meantime. Accordingly, she announced that the European Commission will soon issue an explanatory document on the consequences of the CJEU’s ruling to provide guidance for businesses on international data transfers.
The European Union on Monday said it had agreed in principle with the US on a new trans-Atlantic data-transfer agreement. The negotiations between the EU and U.S. became more urgent after the court’s ruling, which raises questions about how much legal certainty a new version could bring businesses because it enshrines the power for national data protection authorities to independently review, and potentially suspend, data transfers to the U.S.