Europe’s top court on Thursday rejected a key EU tool used to transfer Europeans’ personal data across the Atlantic for commercial use but upheld the validity of another tool used by hundreds of thousands of companies to transfer data worldwide, Reuters reported.
“The Court of Justice invalidates Decision 2016/1250 on the adequacy of the protection provided by the EU-US Data Protection Shield,” the court said. “However, it considers that Commission Decision 2010/87 on standard contractual clauses for the transfer of personal data to processors established in third countries is valid.”
The rulings came in a clash between Facebook and Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the decision will create legal headaches and potentially disrupt operations for thousands of multinational companies that do business in the U.S. and Europe.
Depending on how it is applied, the ruling could force some of them – including tech giants like Facebook, Alphabet and Apple – to decide between a costly shift toward data centers into Europe or cutting off business with the region.
Blocking data transfers to the U.S. could upend billions of dollars of trade from cross-border data activities, including cloud services, human resources, marketing and advertising, tech advocates say.
Be the first to comment