Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On March 25, 2022, the European Commission and United States issued a joint statement announcing an agreement in principle on a new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework (the “Joint Statement”).

Last year, European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo discussed that the negotiations on an enhanced EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework would intensify and the EU-U.S. partnership “on facilitating trusted data flows will support economic recovery after the global pandemic, to the benefit of citizens and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.”  A new framework for transfers of personal data between the EU and the U.S. has been needed since the previous EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework was annulled by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Schrems II judgment in July 2020. Discussions on a potential enhanced EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework began in August 2020.

According to the Joint Statement, under the  new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework, the U.S. will “put in place new safeguards to ensure that…surveillance activities are necessary and proportionate in the pursuit of defined national security objectives.”

Additionally, in a joint speech given in Brussels today, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyden, and U.S. President Biden further indicated that the EU and the U.S. have found “an agreement in principle on a new framework for transatlantic data flows” that will “enable predictable and trustworthy data flows between the EU and the U.S., safeguarding privacy and civil liberties.”