Privacy Shield is dead. Long live the Data Privacy Framework, the DPF, the new framework proposed by the European Commission to regulate data transfers to the United States. For many observers, including Noyb’s privacy specialists, the DPF is destined for the same fate as its predecessors.
This device has other detractors than the famous Max Schrems. In France, a Modem deputy, affiliated with the presidential majority, also intends to obtain from European justice the cancellation of the new framework.
Privcy Shield and DPF: same flaws
At the end of last week, the elected representative of Vendée Philippe Latombe – considered too favorable to video surveillance and its industry by LQDN – filed an appeal with the courts. But to obtain its annulment, he is experimenting with a new method: appealing to the CJEU.
Philippe Latombe thus refers the matter to the EU court on the basis of a specific article of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, the TFEU. This allows a citizen to challenge a Commission decision with a view to its annulment.
To succeed, such a procedure must meet conditions, which is the case with the DPF for the complainant. Previous appeals against data transfers have proven successful, but for the MP, the process is taking too long to complete.
Philippe Latombe also hopes that the application of the DPF will be suspended by the court pending a decision on the merits. Deadlines are short. The transfers should in principle begin on October 10.
A new, faster, but uncertain method
The Vendée elected official therefore hopes to block the regulations before they result in actual sending of data to the United States where they would not be protected. Because for Philippe Latombe, there is no doubt that the DPF “is a carbon copy” of the Privacy Shield, therefore invalidated by the CJEU.
“The spirit of Philippe Latombe’s approach is to achieve a real evolution of federal legislation in the United States on the protection of personal data, the only one capable of ensuring equivalence with the guarantees of the GDPR”, reacts in France on president of the AFCDP, Paul-Olivier Gibert.
The action brought by the elected official Modem, however, constitutes a first against a decision of the Commission. If it can in theory allow a quicker outcome, its outcome is nevertheless uncertain. In case of failure, the fate of the Privacy Shield v2 will be sealed again by the Court of Justice of the EU and an appeal by Max Schrems.