European Commission Adopts UK Adequacy Decisions

The new adequacy decisions have been adopted under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Law Enforcement Directive (LED).

This confirms the EU's acceptance that the UK's data protection regime is substantially equivalent to the EU regime and allows personal data to flow freely from the EU and wider European Economic Area (EEA) to the UK. This announcement has been welcomed by the UK government and is good news for both UK and EU and EEA businesses which depend on the ongoing transfer of data to the UK, particularly those in the insurance, health, and technology sectors. Failure to secure an adequacy decision, would, it is estimated, have cost UK business upwards of £1.6billion. The UK has previously recognised the EU and EEA member states as adequate.