EU - US Privacy Shield: To be or not to be?
The EU Commission and the US have agreed on a new framework for transatlantic data flows, named "the EU-US Privacy Shield". This, however, does not mean that recent efforts of companies to for example enter into Standard Contractual Clauses asap, as an alternative to transfer data to US safe harbour subscribing companies, were made in vain.
The EU data protection advisory body Article 29 Working Party (WP 29) welcomes the fact of the conclusion of the negotiations within the deadline set in its statement of 16 October 2015, yet for now does not assess whether this shield can answer the concerns raised by the Schrems judgement in relation to international transfers of personal data. The WP 29 will do so upon receipt of all the documents pertaining to the EU-US Privacy Shield which it has requested to receive by the end of February. Further to this assessment, the WP 29 will then also consider whether transfer mechanisms, such as Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC) and Binding Corporate Rules (BCR), can still be used to transfer personal data to the US.
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