2023-07-10 16:42:11
Three years after the “Privacy Shield” agreement, a new data protection agreement between the EU and the USA has come into force. The US now guarantees an adequate level of protection for personal data that would be transmitted from the EU to companies in America, the EU Commission announced on Monday in Brussels. The new regulation introduces binding guarantees to address the concerns previously expressed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The ECJ had lifted the “Privacy Shield” for the transmission of data from Europe across the Atlantic in July 2020 on the grounds that the level of data protection in the USA did not correspond to EU standards. Above all, the judges criticized the extensive access possibilities of US secret services to data of Europeans. The ECJ ruling created great legal uncertainty for companies when it came to data transfer between the USA and the EU. The “Privacy Shield” was created in 2016 after the previous “Safe Harbor” regulation had been overturned by the ECJ.
In both cases, the Viennese lawyer Max Schrems complained. Its data protection organization Noyb complained on Monday that the new agreement was largely a copy of the failed “Privacy Shield”. “We already have various legal options in the drawer, although we are fed up with this legal ping-pong.”
Among others, the Facebook parent company Meta, which was fined billions by the Irish data protection authority in May for data transfers to the USA, is hoping for the new agreement. Schrems had also obtained this penalty under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). At the time, in the APA interview, he said it was “not unlikely” that the third EU-US data protection agreement would also be declared invalid by the ECJ. Specifically, he gave the new contract “perhaps a ten percent chance of not being overturned by the ECJ”.
In the future, US secret services may only access the data if it is necessary and proportionate, according to the EU Commission. In addition, a court to review data protection is to be set up. “The new EU-US data protection framework will ensure secure data flows for Europeans and create legal certainty for companies on both sides of the Atlantic,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. According to the EU Commission, the new legal framework should be reviewed regularly.
Schrems criticized the fact that the USA gave the word “proportionate” a different meaning than the ECJ. In addition, violations of the privacy of non-US citizens do not pose a problem for the USA. In his opinion, the prescribed legal remedies are also not in line with EU law.
The President of the German digital industry association Bitkom, Ralf Wintergerst, praised the fact that a “three-year stalemate is now coming to an end.” This basically gave companies legal certainty again, and small and medium-sized companies in particular benefited from this because individual assessments were no longer necessary. “But it is also certain that the new regulation that has now been found will be reviewed again by the courts.”
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