NEWS: SUCCESSOR AGREEMENT TO THE PRIVACY SHIELD HAS ENTERED INTO FORCE

For e-commerce companies in the EU, the world has become a slightly simpler place again, at least as far as data protection is concerned: In July, the European Commission adopted the new adequacy decision in the form of the “EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework”, thus creating a new legal basis for cooperation between EU companies and U.S. service providers and data processing. The previous Privacy Shield agreement had been declared inadmissible by the ECJ three years ago.

One of the reasons for the court ruling at the time was that U.S. authorities had access to the servers of U.S. companies and thus also to the data of EU companies and their customers. However, EU companies are only allowed to cooperate with providers from third countries and process data on their servers if a level of data protection under data protection law can be guaranteed there that is the same as in the European Union. Since its entry into force in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has provided the legal framework. Non-EU states are confirmed compliance with the most important criteria via so-called adequacy decisions and the processing of personal data is thus classified as legally compliant and unobjectionable. Such adequacy decisions exist for a number of countries and can be found on the?website of the European Commission.

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