DUBLIN (Reuters) – The European Commission is due to finalise a new data transfer pact with the United States by mid-July, a lawyer for Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), the bloc’s lead regulator for many big tech firms, said on Monday.
The European Union and United States agreed in March 2022 on the new mechanism to safely transfer EU citizens’ personal data to the U.S. after Europe’s top court threw out the two previous data transfer frameworks because of concerns about U.S. intelligence agencies accessing Europeans’ private data.
The two sides have since been working through the detail and Catherine Donnelly, a lawyer for the DPC, said the Irish regulator understood the pact will be presented to the College of Commissioners, the Commission’s collective decision-making body, by mid-July.
A spokesperson for the Commission said it is currently finalising the framework and reiterated that it expects it to be in place this summer.
The timing of the new deal is being watched particularly in Dublin where the DPC last month ordered Meta Platforms to stop transferring data belonging to EU users of Facebook across the Atlantic.
The social media giant said it expects the new pact to be fully implemented before it has to suspend transfers. That would mean its previous warning that a stoppage could force it to suspend Facebook services in Europe would not come to pass.
Meta was also granted a stay by the Irish High Court earlier this month stopping the clock on the DPC’s May 22 order that it had five months to cease all transfers.
The stay was extended until July 31 by Judge Denis McDonald on Monday, pending further direction on Meta’s challenge of the order in the Irish courts.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin, additional reporting by Foo Yun Chee in Brussels, editing by Christina Fincher)
