In a press statement, the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the US president, Joe Biden, announced on 25 March 2022 that the European Union and the United States had found "an agreement in principle on a new framework for transatlantic data flows", which will "enable predictable and trustworthy data flows between the EU and US, safeguarding privacy and civil liberties".
In a separate statement released on the same day, the EU commissioner for justice, Didier Reynders, and the US secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo, confirmed that the US government and the European Commission had "decided to intensify negotiations on an enhanced EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework" to comply with the Schrems II judgment.
News of an imminent replacement for the Privacy Shield will be welcomed by organisations that have been scrambling to implement alternative safeguards for transfers of personal data from the European Union to the United States since the July 2020 judgment in Schrems II, which found the EU-US Privacy Shield framework for safeguarding transfers of personal data from the European Union to the United States to be invalid.
However, the development has already attracted criticism from Max Schrems, who remarked that "a political announcement without a solid text, seems to generate even more legal uncertainty for the time being".
For further information on this topic please contact Dave Hughes, Michael Bahar or Lizzie Charlton at Eversheds Sutherland by telephone (+44 20 7919 4500) or email ([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]). The Eversheds Sutherland website can be accessed at www.eversheds-sutherland.com.