Tag: CJEU
16. July 2020
On June 16th, 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has declared the invalidity of Decision 2016/1250, therefore rendering protection granted to data transfers under the EU-US Privacy Shield inadequate.
The background
The case originated in a complaint of Mr. Max Schrems against Facebook Ireland regarding the transfer of his personal data as a Facebook user to Facebook Inc., situated in the USA, for further processing. Mr. Schrems lodged a complaint with the Irish supervisory authority seeking to prohibit those transfers. He claimed that the law and practices in the United States do not offer sufficient protection against access by the public authorities to the data transferred to the USA. That complaint was rejected on the ground that, in Decision 2000/5205, the Safe Harbour Decision, the Commission had found that the United States ensured an adequate level of protection. In a judgment delivered on October 6th, 2015, the CJEU, to which the High Court of Ireland had referred questions for a preliminary ruling, declared that decision invalid, resulting in the Schrems I judgment.
Today’s judgement in the Schrems II case came from the request of the Irish High Court to Mr. Schrems to reformulate his initial complaint, seeing as the Safe Harbour Agreement had been deemed inadequate. In the following, Mr. Schrems reformulated his complaint, and claimed that the United States does not offer sufficient protection of data transferred to that country. He seeks the suspension of future transfers of his personal data from the EU to the United States, which Facebook Ireland now carries out pursuant to the Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) set out in the Annex to Decision 2010/87. After the initiation of those proceedings, the Commission adopted Decision 2016/1250 on the adequacy of the protection provided by the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield.
In its request for a preliminary ruling, the referring court asked the CJEU whether the GDPR applies to transfers of personal data pursuant to the SCCs, what level of protection is required by the GDPR in connection with such a transfer, and what obligations are incumbent on supervisory authorities in those circumstances. The High Court of Ireland also raised the question of the validity of both decisions, Decision 2010/87 and Decision 2016/1250.
Judgement in regard to SCCs
In its judgements, the CJEU has stated that it had, after examination of the SCCs in light of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, found nothing that affected the validity of the SCCs and Decision 2010/87.
With regards to the transfer of personal data to third countries, the CJEU claims that the requirements for such purposes set out by the GDPR concerning appropriate safeguards, enforceable rights and effective legal measures must be interpreted in such a way that data subjects whose personal data is transferred into a third country must be afforded a level of protection essentially similar to the level of protection granted within the European Union by the GDPR.
Data Protection Authorities must, unless an adequacy decision has been ruled by the Commission, be required to suspend or prohibit a transfer of personal data to a third country which does not meet these requirements.
The CJEU holds that the SCCs are still effective mechanisms that make it possible to ensure compliance with a level of protection required by the European Union. In that regard the CJEU points out that this imposes an obligation on the data exporter and the recipient of the data to verify, prior to any transfer, whether that level of protection is respected in the third country concerned, and to suspend the transfer of the personal data if it is not.
Judgement in regard to the EU-US Privacy Shield
The CJEU, after thorough examination, concluded that the EU-US Privacy Shield is not adequate protection for transfers to the USA.
This result comes from the fact that the far-reaching US surveillance laws are in conflict with EU fundamental rights. The USA limits most of its protections of personal data from governmental surveillance to US citizen, but does not extend that protection to the personal data of citizens of other countries.
In essence, the limitations on the protection of personal data arising from the domestic law of the USA on the access and use by US public authorities of such data transferred from the European Union are not restricted in a way that satisfies requirements that are equivalent to those required under EU law, which were mentioned in regards to SCCs above. By the principle of proportionality, the surveillance programmes based on those provisions are not limited to what is strictly necessary.
Unless an empowerment and independence of the Ombudsperson takes place, which would give the competence to adopt decisions which are binding on US intelligence services, there are no substantial cause of actions for data subjects before a body which gives legal guarantees in the way that is required by European law for transfers to be equivalent in protection.
Assessment
Overall, the CJEU states that necessary data transfers are still able to continue under Article 49 of the GDPR. However, the provision’s interpretation is restrictive, leaving most companies with data transfers to the USA which are now considered illegal.
Due to the requirements of adequate protection even when relying on the validated SCCs, transfers under such circumstances may also be found unlawful due to the local intelligence laws in the USA, which do not uphold the requirements necessary by European law.
Overall, it is a clear statement of the necessity of reforms of the US intelligence laws, which have to create adequate protections to be able to guarantee the same level of data protection as the European Union, if they want to continue data trades and data transfers necessary for processing.
What does this mean for you?
- If your business has a EU-US Privacy Shield certification, and uses such for legitimization of data transfers within a group of companies, you should push towards the use of the European Standard Contractual Clauses within that corporate group.
- If you are employing service providers which rely on the EU-US Privacy Shield certification, you should also push for the use of Standard Contractual Clauses, or base the data transfer on a different solution for an adequate level of data protection.
16. March 2020
On 25 February 2020, the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (DPA) published a guidance on Cookies and other tracking tools. Previously, the Authority had found that Greek websites and service providers have been largely failing to comply with the rules on the use of Cookies and other trackers set out by the ePrivacy Directive and the GDPR, and reaffirmed by the European Court of Justice’s ruling on Planet 49.
The guidance states that it will be relevant to HTTP/S Cookies, Flash Cookies, local storage applying to HTML 5, device fingerprinting, OS identifiers, and material identifiers.
The Greek DPA reiterated that, generally, providers are obliged to obtain the user’s consent if they are using any tracking tools – irrespective of whether the processing of personal data is taking place. It also outlined that technically necessary trackers are exempt from the obligation to consent. Furthermore, the guidance goes into detail on how information and consent can be made available on websites specifically.
Lastly, the Authority has given Greek website providers a grace period of two months to implement the provisions of this guidance and thereby become compliant with the European rules on tracking tools.
19. December 2019
Today, Thursday 19 of December, the European Court of Justice’s (CJEU) Advocate General Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe released his opinion on the validity of Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) in cases of personal data transfers to processors situated in third countries.
The background of the case, on which the opinion builds on, originates in the proceedings initiated by Mr. Maximillian Schrems, where he stepped up against Facebook’s business practice of transferring the personal data of its European subscribers to servers located in the United States. The case (Schrems I) led the CJEU on October 6, 2015, to invalidate the Safe Harbor arrangement, which up to that point governed data transfers between the EU and the U.S.A.
Following the ruling, Mr. Schrems decided to challenge the transfers performed on the basis of the EU SCCs, the alternative mechanism Facebook has chosen to rely on to legitimize its EU-U.S. data flows, on the basis of similar arguments to those raised in the Schrems I case. The Irish DPA brought proceedings before the Irish High Court, which referred 11 questions to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling, the Schrems II case.
In the newly published opinion, the Advocate General validates the established SCCs in case of a commercial transfer, despite the possibility of public authorities in the third country processing the personal data for national security reasons. Furthermore, the Advocate General states that the continuity of the high level of protection is not only guaranteed by the adequacy decision of the court, but just as well by the contractual safeguards which the exporter has in place that need to match that level of protection. Therefore, the SCCs represent a general mechanism applicable to transfers, no matter the third country and its adequacy of protection. In addition, and in light of the Charter, there is an obligation for the controller as well as the supervisory authority to suspend any third country transfer if, because of a conflict between the SCCs and the laws in the third country, the SCCs cannot be complied with.
In the end, the Advocate General also clarified that the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield decision of 12 July 2016 is not part of the current proceedings, since those only cover the SCCs under Decision 2010/87, taking the questions of the validity of the Privacy Shield off the table.
While the Advocate General’s opinion is not binding, it represents the suggestion of a legal solution for cases for which the CJEU is responsible. However, the CJEU’s decision on the matter is not expected until early 2020, setting the curiosity on the outcome of the case high.
11. December 2019
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Advocate General’s opinion in the case C-311/18 (‘Facebook Ireland and Schrems’) will be released on December 19, 2019. Originally, the CJEU announced that the opinion of the Advocate General in this case, Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe, would be released on December 12, 2019. The CJEU did not provide a reason for this delay.
The prominent case deals with the complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) by privacy activist and lawyer Maximilian Schrems and the transfer of his personal data from Facebook Ireland Ltd. to Facebook Inc. in the U.S. under the European Commission’s controller-to-processor Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs).
Perhaps, the most consequential question that the High Court of Ireland set before the CJEU is whether the transfers of personal data from the EU to the U.S. under the SCCs violate the rights of the individuals under Articles 7 and/or 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Question No. 4). The decision of the CJEU in “Schrems II” will also have ramifications on the parallel case T-738/16 (‘La Quadrature du net and others’). The latter case poses the question whether the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield for data transfers from the EU to the U.S. protects the rights of EU individuals sufficiently. If it does not, the European Commission would face a “Safe Harbor”-déjà vu after approving of the new Privacy Shield in its adequacy decision from 2016.
The CJEU is not bound to the opinion of the Advocate General (AG), but in some cases, the AG’s opinion may be a weighty indicator of the CJEU’s final ruling. The final decision by the Court is expected in early 2020.
2. October 2019
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled on Tuesday, October 1rst, that storing Cookies on internet users’ devices requires active consent. This decision concerns the implementation of widely spread pre-checked boxes, which has been decided to be insufficient to fulfill the requirements of a lawful consent under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The case to be decided concerned a lottery for advertizing purposes initiated by Planet49 GmbH. During the participation process internet users were confronted with two information texts and corresponding checkboxes. Within the first information text the users were asked to agree to be contacted by other companies for promotional offers, by ticking the respective checkbox. The second information text required the user to consent to the installation of Cookies on their devices, while the respective checkbox had already been pre-checked. Therefore users would have needed to uncheck the checkbox if they did not agree to give their consent accordingly (Opt-out).
The Federal Court of Justice in Germany raised and referred their questions to the CJEU regarding whether such a process of obtaining consent could be lawful under the relevant EU jurisprudence, in particular whether valid consent could have been obtained for the storage of information and Cookies on users devices, in case of such mechanisms.
Answering the questions, the CJEU decided, referring to the relevant provisions of Directive 95/46 and the GDPR that require an active behaviour of the user, that pre-ticked boxes cannot constitute a valid consent. Furthermore, in a statement following the decision, the CJEU clarified that consent must be specific, and that users should be informed about the storage period of the Cookies, as well as about third parties accessing users’ information. The Court also said that the “decision is unaffected by whether or not the information stored or accessed on the user’s equipment is personal data.”
In consequence of the decision, it is very likely that at least half of all websites that fall into the scope of the GDPR will need to consider adjustments of their Cookie Banners and, if applicable, procedures for obtaining consent with regard to performance-related and marketing and advertising Cookies in order to comply with the CJEU’s view on how to handle Cookie usage under the current data protection law.
Cookies, in general, are small files which are sent to and stored in the browser of a terminal device as part of the website user’s visit on a website. In case of performance-related and marketing and advertising Cookies, the website provider can then access the information that such Cookies collected about the user when visiting the website on a further occasion, in order to, e.g., facilitate navigation on the internet or transactions, or to collect information about user behaviour.
Following the new CJEU decision, there are multiple possibilities to ensure a GDPR compliant way to receive users’ active consent. In any case it is absolutely necessary to give the user the possibility of actively checking the boxes themselves. This means that pre-ticked boxes are no longer a possibility.
In regard to the obligation of the website controller to provide the user with particular information about the storage period and third party access, a possible way would be to include a passage about Cookie information within the website’s Privacy Policy. Another would be to include all the necessary information under a seperate tab on the website containing a Cookie Policy. Furthermore, this information needs to be easily accessible by the user prior to giving consent, either by including the information directly within the Cookie Banner or by providing a link therein.
As there are various different options depending on the types of the used Cookies, and due to the clarification made by the CJEU, it is recommended to review the Cookie activities on websites and the corresponding procedures of informing about those activities and obtaining consent via the Cookie Banner.
6. October 2017
On October 3rd 2017, the Irish High Court publicised it will refer the Facebook case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The lawsuit is based on a complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner filed by Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer and privacy activist. Schrems was also involved in the case against Facebook resulting in the CJEU’s landmark decision declaring the Commission’s US Safe Harbour Decision invalid.
In his new complaint, Schrems is challenging the data transfers of Faceook to the US on the basis of the “Model Contracts for the transfer of personal data to third countries”, also known as standard contractual clauses (SCCs). Schrems himself said, “In simple terms, US law requires Facebook to help the NSA with mass surveillance and EU law prohibits just that.”
In contrast to Schrems, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner challenged the validity of the SCCs in general and not only in matters of Facebook. Due to the importance of the case, the Irish High Court referred it to the CJEU. The CJEU will now have to decide whether data transfers to the US are valid on the basis of the Commission’s Model Contracts. It remains to be seen what the CJEU will decide and if its decision will have an impact on the Privacy Shield framework.
