Data Protection: The "EU-US Privacy Shield" – Will It Be A Shield Of Any Substance?

After much uncertainty, on 2 February this year the European Commission announced that it had reached agreement with the US to replace the Safe Harbor framework.  However, anyone hoping that the announcement would bring clarity will be disappointed – there is still a long way to go before a replacement for Safe Harbor becomes a workable reality.

Background

Under the Data Protection Directive the transfer of personal data outside the EEA is restricted unless an adequate level of data protection is in place in the destination country.  In 2000, to enable US businesses to receive and process data from Europe, an agreement was reached, known as Safe Harbor, under which US companies could self-certify that they treated incoming European data in accordance with a set of principles that complied with EU data protection law.