The Article 29 Working Party (WP29), on February 29, 2016, issued a statement on the Commission’s draft adequacy decision and the legal documents of the Privacy Shield.
While welcoming the draft decision and those documents, the WP29 warns about the need to carefully analyze the material. In particular, the WP29 — divided in subgroups — “will analyze the safeguards provided for in the arrangement on both the commercial aspects and the limitations for national security, public interests and law enforcement purposes.” The analysis will be conducted in light of the Schrems case of the ECJ, “the European jurisprudence on fundamental rights, the letter of the Working Party to the European Commission on Safe Harbour of 10 April 2014 and the Working Party’s Working Document on transfers of personal data to third countries.”
When the several subgroups complete their analysis, the Future of Privacy subgroup will
finalize a draft opinion of the Working Party in April (plenary meeting April 12 and 13, 2016).
Afterwards the Member States in comitology (pursuant to Article 31 of Directive 95/46/EC) will issue an opinion and only afterwards the European Commission will adopt its “adequacy-decision”.
Press release (Statement of the Article 29 Working Party on the Presentation by he European Commission of The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield) here.
For more information, Francesca Giannoni-Crystal