EU - USA: a new legal framework for data transfers

Brussels has announced that it has adopted a new legal framework to allow the transfer of personal data from the EU to the United States, which is crucial for the digital economy, after rulings by the European courts invalidated the previous arrangements.

"The new EU-US data protection framework will ensure secure data flows for Europeans and provide legal certainty for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a statement.

The two schemes previously put in place to allow companies to transfer this data from Europe to the United States had been invalidated because of fears of surveillance by the American intelligence services - the latest, Privacy Shield, in 2020 -.

The new legal framework provides additional safeguards to ensure that access by US intelligence agencies, in the name of national security, to data collected in Europe and transferred or hosted on the other side of the Atlantic is limited to what is "necessary" and "proportionate".

It also opens up the possibility of recourse to European nationals if they consider that their personal data has been illegally collected by US intelligence services, enabling them to obtain, where appropriate, the deletion or correction of this data.