Court's Opinion Good News for EU-US Data Flows

An EU court ruling yesterday has raised questions over the validity of the Privacy Shield data sharing framework between Europe and the US, although it confirmed the legality of standard contractual clauses (SCCs), with caveats.

The opinion of advocate general (AG) of the EU Court of Justice, Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe, stems from the infamous Facebook-Max Schrems case in which a complaint by the latter claimed that transfer of his data from the EU to the US by the social network infringed his privacy rights.

That led to the end of the Safe Harbor data sharing agreement between the EU and US in 2015, because the latter’s bulk surveillance programs, as revealed by Edward Snowden, were considered to imperil Europeans’ privacy rights without providing any adequate cause of redress.

The new opinion issued by the advocate general indicates the EU still has concerns over Safe Harbor’s successor, Privacy Shield.

“According to the advocate general, the resolution of the dispute in the main proceedings does not require the court to rule on the validity of the ‘privacy shield’ decision, since that dispute concerns only the validity of Decision 2010/87,” a statement from the Court of Justice noted.

“Nevertheless, the advocate general sets out, in the alternative, the reasons that lead him to question the validity of the ‘privacy shield’ decision in the light of the right to respect for private life and the right to ..

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