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Housing Seminar: Partnerships with the Public Sector – Avoiding the pitfalls
Thu 31 May 2012
Minerva House, 5 Montague Close, London, SE1 9BB
EC aims for joint data protection agreement with US
Wed 14 Jul 2010
The European Commission (EC) is to work with officials in the US to come up with a joint agreement regarding mutual data exchanges.
Viviane Reding, the justice and rights commissioner at the EC, said the existing approach is "piecemeal" and does not allay concerns people have about their privacy.
Speaking to the Atlantic Council in Washington, she confirmed that a data protection agreement between the EC and the US is to be negotiated.
This, she stated, would ensure that data transfers are subject to high levels of data protection in both the US and Europe.
Ms Reding said an agreement would provide greater legal certainty to data transfers.
She added that negotiations with the US will commence within the next few months after EU member states have finished discussing the "finer points" of the EC's proposals.
It is hoped the agreement could prevent a repeat of problems that arose recently during negotiations regarding financial information and the transfer of airline passenger name records.
This comes after Ms Reding suggested data protection laws be changed to empower web users and assure them that their personal information is safe in the digital world.
