Tuesday 1 March 2016

EU Commission Publishes Legal Text Of EU-U.S. Privacy Shield

The European Commission made public a draft "adequacy decision" of the Commission as well as the texts that will constitute the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield after the Safe-Harbour treaty was found invalid by the European Court of Justice. This includes the Privacy Shield Principles companies have to abide by, as well as written commitments by the U.S. Government (to be published in the U.S. Federal Register) on the enforcement of the arrangement, including assurance on the safeguards and limitations concerning access to data by public authorities.

In a next step a committee composed of representatives of the Member States will be consulted and the EU Data Protection Authorities (Article 29 Working Party) will give their opinion, before a final decision by the College. In the meantime, the U.S. side will make the necessary preparations to put in place the new framework, monitoring mechanisms and the new Ombudsperson mechanism.