Policy Observatory
The Article 29 Working Party (WP29) agreed that while Privacy Shield is an improvement on Safe Harbour, it's still potted with shortcomings. In its first opinion on the draft text in April, the WP29 was highly critical of the proposed deal. Following its meeting on Monday, the group admitted that the final version has addressed some of its issues, but by no means all of them.
European Union privacy watchdogs will let a new EU-U.S. commercial data pact underpinning billions of dollars of transatlantic trade run for at least a year without any legal challenge, they said on Tuesday.
The EU and US have launched their data transfer pact known as Privacy Shield. The agreement is supposed to protect the privacy of EU nationals when their personal details are transferred to the United States. The pact replaces the 15-year old Safe Harbour agreement, which was invalidated last October by the European Court of Justice.
The US government has asked to be joined as a party in the Irish High Court case between the Austrian privacy activist and lawyer Max Schrems, and the social network Facebook. The American Chamber of Commerce, Business Software Alliance, and the Irish Business and Employers Confederation also asked to join the procedure, as these organisations’ members also use standard contractual clauses to transfer data to the United States.
The Irish High Court refers Facebook privacy case to the Court of Justice of the European Unionin order to determine the legal status of data transfers under Standard Contractual Clauses. Therefore, Facebook could face questions from the CJEU about the validity of the model clauses it uses to transfer data outside of the 28-member-state bloc.