Data Security Expert: Political Agreement on EU-Us Data Protection Is Worthless

Detlef Schmuck: “It is hardly conceivable that the US will submit to the EU’s data protection diktat.”

Hamburg, April 20, 2022 – “The so-called political agreement on data protection between the European Union and the United States is not worth a damn at this point in time,” says data security expert Detlef Schmuck. The President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. President Joe Biden had recently surprised with such an announcement. “The decision of the European Court of Justice ECJ of June 2020 still applies, according to which the transatlantic data protection agreement Privacy Shield is invalid. Any new and whatever regulation will have to answer to the same court,” Detlef Schmuck, CEO of Hamburg-based data service provider TeamDrive, is certain.

He continues: “It is up to the USA to raise data protection there to the level of the European Union. An executive order from the U.S. president will not be enough to achieve this, but it will be important to introduce data protection in the U.S. that is comprehensible and enforceable for European citizens. Even if a new agreement, let’s call it Privacy Shield 2.0, is reached by the end of this year as planned, there will be lawsuits against it and the European Court of Justice will not rule on it for several years.”

According to the data security expert, the likelihood that a legally binding data transfer agreement between the EU and the U.S. will be reached in the third attempt, following the Safe Harbor agreement overturned by the ECJ in 2015 and the end of Privacy Shield 2020, is “extremely low.” Detlef Schmuck: “With the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU has brought the protection of personal data to the highest level worldwide. It is hardly conceivable that the USA will submit to this data protection dictate. Many business models of U.S. companies would simply no longer function if European data protection were taken as a basis. European companies are therefore well advised, even in the case of a new agreement, to wait and see whether it will be confirmed by the ECJ in a few years or overturned once again.”