European Data Protection Board Forms Two New Taskforces To Address Schrems II Aftermath

On Friday September 4, 2020, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), a body consisting of representatives of all the Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) in the European Economic Area, announced that it had formed two new taskforces, following the groundbreaking Schrems II ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in July 2020.¹  In that judgment, the CJEU held that Standard Contractual Clauses (one of the mechanisms for lawfully transferring personal data from the EU to the U.S. under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)) were in principle valid, but in certain circumstances additional safeguards were required, in particular when transferring data to the U.S. The CJEU also held that relying on the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield was an invalid mechanism for transferring personal data (see here for a more detailed analysis of the Schrems II decision).