Privacy & Cybersecurity Law Blog

According to Bloomberg BNA, Paul F. Nemitz, Director for Fundamental Rights and Union Citizenship at the Directorate-General Justice of the European Commission, said at a privacy conference that he hoped a new U.S.-EU Safe Harbor agreement would be reached by the evening of Monday, February 1, 2016.

According to Nemitz, Věra Jourová, European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality Justice, will go to Parliament on Monday evening to “inform member states...of the outcome [of the Safe Harbor discussions],” including whether or not an agreement has been reached. U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill, who spoke at the same privacy conference, would not confirm whether the agreement would be reached by Monday. She said, “[t]here’s absolutely a path to agreement. We need to get there. We can’t allow this to continue to be a stumbling block. But I don’t have a crystal ball.”

As we previously reported, the Article 29 Working Party announced in October 2015 that if no Safe Harbor agreement is reached by the end of January 2016, the individual national data protection authorities may decide to take coordinated enforcement actions against companies that continue to rely on the invalidated Safe Harbor agreement to transfer data.