From Safe Harbour to Privacy Shield: Advances and shortcomings of the new EU-US data transfer rules

Please note: Each In-Depth Analysis is assigned a DOI (digital object identifier), which is a safe and long term way of ensuring a hyperlink to the full text of this report. However, when ESO creates this record, on occasion the DOI still has not been activated by the EU Bookshop. If you find the source url hyperlink does not work please use the alternative location hyperlink listed as a related url.The CJEU’s Schrems judgment of October 2015, besides declaring the European Commission’s Decision on the EU-US ‘Safe Harbour’ data transfer regime invalid, has also settled a number of crucial requirements corresponding to the foundations of EU data protection. In the assessment of the Privacy Shield, the new framework for EU-US data transfer, these need to be taken into account.

In less than one year since the CJEU ruling, the European Commission has adopted a new adequacy decision, in which the Privacy Shield regime is deemed to adequately protect EU citizens. The main improvements of the Privacy Shield (over its predecessor), as well as the critical reactions to the new arrangements, are discussed in this analysis, taking into account, however, that an annual review is expected to take place by summer 2017, which will also take into account the coming into effect of the EU General Data Protection Regulation in 2018.

• Primary Source

European Parliament: Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the Union: Publications available via the EU Bookshop http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/directorate-general-for-internal-policies-of-the-union-cbf.cKABstF7wAAAEjwYYY4e5K/

EP: EPRS: In-Depth Analysis, January 2017: From Safe Harbour to Privacy Shield: Advances and shortcomings of the new EU-US data transfer rules http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2017/595892/EPRS_IDA(2017)595892_EN.pdf

ESO: Background information: Reactions to the EU-US Privacy Shield, the successor to the Safe Harbour agreement http://www.europeansources.info/record/reactions-to-the-eu-us-privacy-shield-the-successor-to-the-safe-harbour-agreement/

---