On October 3, 2017, the Irish High Court deemed that the Irish DPA has “well founded concerns” over US privacy surveillance of Facebook and is worried that there may not be an effective remedy in US law compatible with the fundamental EU data protection right to file a petition before an independent tribunal when EU citizens’ rights are violated, according to Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
According to the Irish High Court, “the introduction of the Privacy Shield Ombudsperson mechanism in the Privacy Shield decision does not eliminate those well-founded concerns.”
The Irish High Court deemed that the Court of justice of the European Union (CJEU) shall decide whether:
- the Ombudsperson mechanism in the Privacy Shield amounts to a remedy satisfying EU fundamental rights requirements;
- the existence of the exceptional discretionary power conferred on the Data Protection Commissioner by Article 28 of the Directive to suspend the transfer of data to a data importer in a third country on the basis of the legal regime in that third country is sufficient to secure the validity of the standard contractual clauses (SCC) Decisions.
The executive summary of the Judgement by the Court can be downloaded here while the complete 129 pages judgement is available here.
More information on the case brought by the Irish DPA against Facebook Ireland Ltd and Mr Schrems over EU-US data transfers is available here and here.
The Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s latest update on the case can be found here.
EPIC’s Update on the case can be found here.
Schrem’s website “Europe v Facebook” (website collecting information regarding class actions against Facebook) is available at http://www.europe-v-facebook.org….
For more information on international data transfers, Francesca Giannoni-Crystal and Federica Romanelli
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