On the same day that the European Commission debuted the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, the Article 29 Working Party (WP29) issued a statement welcoming the publication of the draft “adequacy decision” of the European Commission as well as the legal texts that constitute the Privacy Shield arrangement.
In accordance with its mission, WP29 said that it would assess the documents in order to give its opinion on the level of protection afforded by the Privacy Shield. The statement also said that subgroups of the Working Party will be engaged to analyze the safeguards provided for in the Privacy Shield on both the commercial aspects and the limitations for national security, public interests and law enforcement purposes, including in light of the Schrems decision of the European Court of Justice on October 6, 2015.
The next steps will be to finalize WP29’s draft opinion which will be adopted at the Working Party’s next plenary meeting in April 2016.