On Thursday 5 July MEPs adopted the draft resolution drawn up by Claude Moraes (S&D, United Kingdom), which concludes that the transatlantic data protection mechanism, the Privacy Shield, provides an insufficient level of protection for European citizens.
The resolution was adopted by 303 votes, with 223 against with 29 abstentions. It confirms the request to suspend the Privacy Shield unless the US authorities fully comply with it.
Attempts by the EPP to water down the resolution were not enough and all of its amendments were rejected (see EUROPE 12055). In keeping with what it previously announced, the ECR group voted against the resolution as a whole, given that the date limit of 1 September had been maintained.
During the debate proceeding to vote, the European Commissioner for Justice, Věra Jourová, said that “the Commission will not hesitate to act upon its obligations and to make use of its power to suspend the Privacy Shield”.
Nonetheless, at this stage, she continues to think that suspension is not justified and that improvements have been made.
She repeated her wish for the shortcomings to be rectified by the second evaluation of the mechanism and disclosed the date for this exercise at 18 October.
Ms Jourová also warned that, “Without the Privacy Shield framework, data transfer will predominantly take place on the basis of contractual safeguards between EU and US companies, will be costlier in particular for PME”.
On the same day, Abigail Slater, the special assistant to the President Trump for Technology, Telecoms and Cybersecurity, informed the press about her impressions regarding this resolution. She said that a lot of progress had been achieved by the US authorities since the mechanism had been introduced and that this progress has often been underestimated in some of rhetoric.
According to another US source, Parliament's resolution made several factually imprecise references to the US authorities' shortcomings. This source said that the date limit on 1 September is not really a constraint and that the real interlocutor remains the Commission and not Parliament. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana and Carmen García, trainee)