(Bloomberg) — The European Union and U.S. agreed in principle to a new transatlantic data transfer pact in a move that that could bring to an end months of uncertainty over how thousands of companies can safely move data across the ocean.
This new pact will “enable predictable and trustworthy data flows, balancing security, the right to privacy and data protection,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a tweet on Friday. “This is another step in strengthening our partnership.”
Negotiators will still need to hash out the finer details but the result here might be decisive for the pact’s long-term survival. The EU Court of Justice struck down two previous EU agreements that enabled Meta Platforms Inc. and thousands of others companies to smoothly transfer commercially important user data across the Atlantic.
The EU Court of Justice, the bloc’s top court, in a surprise 2020 ruling toppled the so-called Privacy Shield, a trans-Atlantic transfer accord, over longstanding fears that citizens’ data wasn’t safe from American surveillance. While it upheld a separate, contract-based system to keep transferring data, the court’s doubts in its binding ruling about American data protection already, made this a shaky alternative too.
Meta, Google Face Data Doomsday as Key EU Decision Looms
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