It is the beginning of 2016, and American companies are
anxiously awaiting news of whether or not a new "Safe Harbor
2.0" will emerge. In October of 2015, the European Court of
Justice declared invalid Safe Harbor 1.0 in the
Schrems decision. This had an immediate effect on any
American company collecting personal data from the EU by removing
the legal basis for this kind of data transfer. As of October 2015,
consumer, client, and even employee data cannot be legally
transferred to the US under the Safe Harbor Framework.
Fortunately, the data protection regulators
("DPAs") recognized the turmoil this decision created
within the business community on both sides of the Atlantic. As a
result, the Article 29 Working Party (which is the convention of
DPAs from each of the EU Member States)
issued an enforcement moratorium on enforcement actions until
the end of January 2016, so that they could assess the
effectiveness of data transfer tools available. As part of
