Brussels, 11/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Commissioner for Justice, Vera Jourova, told the meeting of the Justice ministers, on Friday 11 March, that she wanted the Privacy Shield on transfers of personal data for commercial reasons between the EU and the United States to be up and running “by June”, to put an end to the current legal uncertainty. She expressed her hopes that the opinion of the Article 29 group, which brings together the national data protection authorities, which is scheduled for April, will be able to move in this direction and that the ministers will also have given their agreement by then.
On Friday lunchtime, the Commissioner presented the ministers with the main novelties brought in to this mechanism, which replaces the former “Safe Harbor”, which was overturned in October by the Court of Justice of the EU. Readers may recall that the new Privacy Shield reinforces the rights of recourse of Europeans on American soil and theoretically increases the supervision by the American authorities. The access of American national security agencies will remain limited and proportionate and an independent mediation service will be set up to look into any problems. The ministers' discussions were encouraging, according to Commission sources, which added that they had received considerable support for their work, on Friday lunchtime.
The EP has been far less enthusiastic following the announcement of the new framework by the Commission on 29 February, but will not be called upon to vote on the mechanism, which comes under an adequacy decision of the Commission. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)