Jourova defends unfinished Safe Harbour deal

Wim Nauwelaerts, managing partner at law firm Hunton & William in Brussels: “The Commission is under a lot of pressure not only to come up with an arrangement that is set in stone, but also that takes into account all the concerns raised in the Schrems decision. Based on the reactions of the Parliament tonight, it is clear that they want to avoid a Schrems II at all cost.”

Estelle Massé, European policy analyst at NGO Access Now: “For the time being, any deal would not likely resist future legal challenges. Only a few of the privacy and surveillance reforms that are needed to secure an agreement have been implemented.”

Dean Garfield, president and CEO of Washington-based technology lobby group Information Technology Industry Council (ITI): "Given the very complex issues at hand, we understand that the negotiators are continuing their work and are taking some additional time to ensure that they conclude the strongest possible agreement. We encourage negotiators to take the time necessary to secure an agreement that both enhances privacy protections and provides the certainty needed to promote innovation and economic growth.”

The US-EU Safe Harbour agreement allowed over 4,000 companies to transfer data from the EU to the US--provided the companies guaranteed the data's security abroad. EU law considers data privacy protections to be inadequate in the US. In October 2015, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled Safe Harbour to be invalid on grounds that government surveillance in the US threatens the privacy of EU citizens' data, and that there is no judicial redress for EU citizens whose data is accessed by state surveillance agencies in the US.

Since the ECJ decision, EU and US negotiators have sped up their talks to strike a new data transfer agreement. European data protection authorities from the 28 EU member states met after the ECJ decision, and asked the Commission to come up with a new deal by the end of January 2016. The data protection authorities are tasked with investigating and deciding on privacy complaints in their own member states.

• End of January: Deadline given by European data protection authorities for a new EU-US data transfer agreement.
• 2 February: Data protection authorities hold meeting.