Various sources report that US and EU representatives met on December 17, 2015 to hash out an agreement that would replace the recently invalidated Safe Harbor privacy framework. The two governments aim to have a replacement framework in place by January, says EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourová. One of the main goals of the new program is to allow EU citizens’ grievances to be filed directly with their national privacy regulator.
As reported in our client alert and blogs, in October 2015, judges from the European Court of Justice issued a judgment striking down a 15-year old agreement, known as the Safe Harbor framework, which allowed US and European organizations to freely move personal data between the two regions as long as the US ensured an adequate level of data protection at the company and certified that it would abide by the seven EU data privacy principles regarding notice, choice, onward transfer, security, data integrity, access, and enforcement. The invalidation ruling impacted nearly 4,000 businesses that relied on the Safe Harbor framework to transfer data between the US and Europe and requires all businesses to revaluate their compliance with European data privacy and security standards.
