EU-US Privacy Shield May Not Be Up After All

Article by Kolvin Stone, Christian Schröder, Sophie Ratzke and Paul Hansford

Bad news for companies relying on transatlantic data flows as, once again, the transfer of personal data from Europe to the United States is called into question by the Article 29 Working Party (the "Working Party"), an influential committee of the EU privacy regulators. Ever since the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor Framework was declared invalid by the Court of Justice of the European Union in October 2015, companies have had to find alternative ways to legally transfer personal data. On 29 February 2016, the EU Commission proposed the "EU-U.S. Privacy Shield" as a replacement to the Safe Harbor Framework and a potential solution.