Report from Computing UK
In Brief – EU privacy campaigners are pressing the European Union to dismantle its 2023 data transfer agreement with the United States following the recent decision by the US Supreme Court that granted the President the authority to remove Federal Trade Commission members. Austrian activist Max Schrems and his organization, Noyb, argue that the ruling undermines the FTC’s independence, which they claim is a core requirement of European law for protecting personal data. Because the European Commission heavily relied on this independent regulator for its adequacy decision related to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF), Schrems contends that the legal basis for unrestricted transfers is now invalid. While Noyb says they plan to file a lawsuit within weeks, the judicial review could take several years.
Context – The legal dispute over US-EU “Cross Border Data Flows” emerged following the Snowden revelations. While the series of European legal cases have technically involved Facebook, the fight is about US anti-terrorism surveillance laws. The European Court of Justice invalidated the US-EU Safe Harbor agreement in 2015 and then struck down the US-EU Privacy Shield agreement in 2020. However, the European General Court ruled in 2025 that the 2023 DPF adequately protects the privacy rights of Europeans regarding their personal data held by companies in the United States. This seemed to resolve the dispute that threatened to block the ability of countless companies in both jurisdictions to transfer, store and process data for European-based users in the US. The DPF clarified when US intelligence agencies can access personal information about people in the EU and outlines how Europeans can appeal such collection, including creating the Data Protection Review Court made up of American judges to hear appeals from EU citizens who allege that their personal data was improperly collected and used by US agencies. However, the EU privacy advocates who took down the earlier agreements in 2015 and 2020 have continued to object to the 2023 DPF and quickly mobilized following the Supreme Court’s FTC ruling.