29 March 2022 Tuesday
A New Agreement on Data Sharing from EU and USA
The European Union and the U.S. on Friday announced they had agreed in principle to a new framework for cross-border data transfers, providing some much-needed relief for tech giants like Meta and Google.
For over a year, officials on either side of the Atlantic have been hashing out a deal to replace the so-called Privacy Shield, an arrangement allowing firms to share Europeans’ data to the U.S. Privacy Shield was invalidated in July 2020, striking a blow to Facebook and other companies that had relied on the mechanism for their EU-U.S. data flows. The EU’s top court sided with Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist who argued the existing framework did not protect Europeans from U.S. surveillance.
This framework underscores our shared commitment to privacy, to data protection, and to the rule of law, The U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday, adding the smooth flow of data would help facilitate $7.1 trillion in economic relationships with the EU. The new agreement will enable predictable and trustworthy data flows between the EU and US, safeguarding privacy and civil liberties, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Friday, without offering much additional detail on how it will work.
