Are Additional SCCs For International Data Transfers On The Horizon?

On 4 June 2021, the European Commission introduced updated Standard Contractual Clauses ('SCCs') for the transfer of personal data to third countries (i.e. countries outside the European Economic Area ('EEA')) pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) ('GDPR') (see here). The previous SCCs pre-dated the GDPR and required an overhaul to better reflect today's data transfer realities. At the same time, the European Commission also wanted to address (some of) the concerns raised by the Court of Justice of the European Union ('CJEU') in Data Protection Commissioner v. Facebook Ireland Limited, Maximillian Schrems (C-311/18) ('the Schrems II Case'), by adding data protection safeguards to the SCCs. The previous SCCs were repealed on 27 September 2021, leaving the June 2021 SCCs as the only SCCs that controllers and processors can currently enter into in order to transfer personal data to non-adequate countries outside of the EEA and