EU Safe Harbor Ruling – Trends And Courses Of Action

Background

On October 6, 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") invalidated a decision by the European Commission that recognized the adequacy of a self-certification scheme for United States based companies for the purpose of allowing businesses to transfer personal data from the European Union to the U.S. (Case C-362/14). The invalidated European Commission decision is one of only 12 adequacy decisions adopted by the European Commission, and is generally known as Safe Harbor.

We sent an earlier eAlert on the CJEU judgment in the Schrems case in October.

As a result of the Schrems judgment, businesses may no longer transfer personal data from the European Union to the United States relying on the EU Safe Harbor decision. On November 6, the European Commission issued a Communication to the European Parliament. The Communication followed on the heels of a number of public statements by the European Commission, the Article 29