As reported in the Barada blog in October 2015, a European court invalidated the Safe Harbor pact, which dictated how data could be transferred between European Union (EU) Member States and the United States (U.S.). For employers, the result has been to squelch the information flow about candidates who have worked or lived overseas. Since that time, the EU and the U.S. have been trying to negotiate the terms of a new agreement.
On February 2, 2016, two days after the expiration of the deadline for a new agreement, the U.S. and EU announced they had negotiated a mutually satisfactory data-transfer arrangement. This should be good news for the thousands of businesses that need to exchange data with EU companies for hiring, ecommerce and other reasons.
However, some experts question whether the EU’s 28 member states will approve it. National data protection regulators must also provide their support to the pact, and European privacy-rights advocates may file legal challenges seeking to overturn it.