Data protection: Commission welcomes US Executive Order for a new EU-US Data Privacy Framework

On 25 March 2022, President von der Leyen and President Biden announced that they had reached an agreement in principle on a new EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The framework will foster trans-Atlantic data flows and address the concerns raised by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Schrems II decision of July 2020. Following that, the EU and US teams worked intensively to finalise the details of this agreement and translate it into a legal framework. On 7 October, President Biden signed an Executive Order on ‘Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities’. Along with the Regulations issued by the Attorney General, the Executive Order implements into US law the agreement in principle announced in March. The Executive Order introduces new binding safeguards to address all the points raised by the Court of Justice of the EU, limiting access to EU data by US intelligence services and establishing a Data Protection Review Court. On that basis, the European Commission will now prepare a draft adequacy decision, as well as launch its adoption procedure. For more information, a Q&A is available online.