Is there a high risk that the Privacy Shield will be invalidated?
Having in mind that the European Court of Justice declared Privacy Shield’s predecessor, Safe Harbor, invalid, the Head of the Hamburg data protection authority, Prof. Dr. Johannes Caspar, would like to ask the European Court of Justice whether it thinks that the Commission’s decision to strike the data-transfer deal was valid.
Due to the fact that there might be upoming legal changes in Germany Caspar hopes that those will make it possible for the country’s DPAs to challenge adequacy decisions.
An E-Mail was published quoting Caspar saying that “The decision of the EU Commission concerning the Privacy Shield constitutes a new legal ground for data subjects, which is a binding document for all members of the [Article 29 Working Party of data protection authorities],” and going on “On the other hand, I have serious doubts whether this adequacy decision meets the legal requirements of the principle of proportionality and judicial redress in the [CJEU’s] Safe Harbor judgement.” Caspar went on commenting that “It is expected that sooner or later the CJEU will assess whether the access by public U.S. authorities to personal data transferred under the Privacy Shield is limited to what is strictly necessary and proportionate in a democratic society. If there is a legal way to seek reference to the CJEU – and we hope that the national lawmaker will enact a law for national DPAs soon – we will take all appropriate steps for getting a ruling on the validity of the Commission’s decision.”
Due to the fact that the GDPR is a regulation rather than a directive, it does not require transposition into national laws. However, the German government debates about new legislation in order to make German data protection law compliant with the GDPR. However, in July the German government issued a statement saying it is working on the new legislation but not mentioning whether this also includes that DPAs are able to challenge adequacy decisions.
Furthermore, Caspar commented that the Article 29 Working Party’s next opportunity to question the Privacy Shield will come in a year’s time, “if the Shield will still be in force”.
However, not only Caspar shows a sceptical point of view towards the Privacy Shield, Thomas Jansen, a partner with DLA Piper in Munich stated that “Many [European] data protection and privacy experts see a high risk that the Privacy Shield will be invalidated”.
