EU to Rule on European, US Data Pact in Early October

The European Union’s highest court said it would decide on Oct 6 on a highly publicized case that could invalidate a data-transfer agreement between the EU and the US that is crucial to thousands of businesses. Judges at the European Court of Justice will deliver their decision less than two weeks after an adviser to the court published a nonbinding recommendation that the long-standing agreement, known as Safe Harbor, should be invalidated. A court decision scrapping Safe Harbor risks wreaking havoc on the companies that use the framework to transfer data for everything from payroll information to company phone books. The 15-year-old trans-Atlantic deal allows firms, such as Facebook and Yelp, to store Europeans’ data in the US as long as the companies agree to comply with Europe’s stricter privacy laws.

Yves Bot, an advocate general to the high court, said the deal should be nullified because Europeans’ data is unprotected in the US, “because the surveillance carried out by the US is mass, indiscriminate surveillance.” US officials criticized Bot for basing his opinion on “inaccurate assertions” about US intelligence practices.