European Commission paves the way for approval of onward transfer agreement with U.S.

As we wrote about last month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order setting forth the steps that the United States will take to implement the U.S. commitments under the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF). The European Commission has now issued a draft adequacy decision supporting that executive order.

The draft adequacy decision concludes that with the DPF and executive order in place,

[t]he United States ensures an adequate level of protection for personal data transferred from the Union to organisations in the United States that are included in the ‘Data Privacy Framework List’, maintained and made publicly available by the U.S. Department of Commerce….

The draft adequacy decision is a significant step toward creating a new framework that would allow personal data transfers from the EU into the U.S. The draft decision will be reviewed in the coming months. We will keep a close eye on any final decision made by the European Commission.

The draft decision can be downloaded here.