The European Union agrees to the United States’ proposal to reintroduce the fallen Privacy Shield. Will the frame hold up this time?

“Today we are taking an important step to give citizens confidence that their data is safe, to deepen our EU-US economic relationship while reaffirming our shared values.” With these words Ursula von der Leyen resigns the new data agreement between the European Union and the United States after the two governments exchanged vows in December.

The new agreement replaces the Privacy Shield that blew up in 2020. As a result of this ruling, American tech companies offering their platforms in Europe had to keep European users’ data on European territory. The agreement thus sees the United States as a “member state” of the Union and again gives the EU the blessing of being allowed to cross the Atlantic for data.

Pour with the wine

To do this, Washington had to promise an “adequate level of protection” for the data. The new framework would give US intelligence agencies very limited access to European citizens’ data. The fact that companies are partially required under US law to disclose data when requested by the intelligence agencies was one of the biggest stumbling blocks of the previous data shield. A court will also be set up for European citizens to turn to if they believe their rights have been violated.

Restoring the Privacy Shield has primarily economic motives. The value of data transfers between Europe and the United States is estimated at more than $1 trillion. Meta has been screaming from the rooftops for some time that it would no longer be able to offer its services in Europe if there were no new data agreement. Does the agreement open the door to the new Threads platform?

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It’s still too early to cool the champagne. Austrian lawyer Max Schrems criticized the agreement on Twitter. He calls it a copy of the previous dataplate that he fought so fiercely.

For those who don’t know the man: Schrems failed twice in a data agreement between Europe and the USA. In 2015 he started his legal search for the Cambridge Analytica scandal and in 2020 he was successful again. Schrems is preparing to take his citizens’ movement noyb back to court.

Schrems’ opinion is also shared by other experts. Lisa De Smet, chief privacy adviser at Cranium, told us earlier this year that in this deal, Europe is primarily submitting to the United States, and not the other way around. Schrems therefore seems to have a good chance of enforcing his rights before the European Court of Justice a third time.