The EU-US Privacy Shield Framework—the replacement for Safe Harbor—provides an “essentially equivalent” level of protection for personal data, a report by Hogan Lovells has found.
Safe Harbor, which governed the exchange of personal data across the Atlantic, was declared invalid by the European Court of Justice in October 2015, creating anxiety for many commercial businesses who rely on the transfer of data. The Shield was conceived in February as a replacement for Safe Harbor by the European Commission and US Department of Commerce.
Hogan Lovell’s report, Legal Analysis of the EU-US Privacy Shield, found that the framework substantially meets the criteria for adequacy under Art 25(6) of the data protection Directive.
Eduardo Ustaran, partner at Hogan Lovells, and lead author of the report, says: "The Privacy Shield is crucial in bridging the gap between European and American approaches to privacy and it is therefore essential that it can be relied upon with complete certainty.
"Given the pressures to ensure that personal data transferred from the EU to the US is protected in accordance with European standards, the Privacy Shield will be subject to strict scrutiny by regulators and the courts as it becomes an established framework for compliance. Accordingly, assessing and determining the robustness and legal validity of the Privacy Shield is a business and political necessity."
The Privacy Shield is not yet in effect. It is currently under review by an EU working party, which will deliver its opinion in the coming weeks. The European Commission will then formally vote on it.
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