Blog Image
Profile Image Verifile
September 5 2014

Irish High Court Refers Questions to European Court of Justice: Can National DPAs Disregard Safe Harbor?

In a new turn to the Maximilian Schrems case in Ireland, the Irish High Court decided to refer several questions to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), including whether national data protection authorities in Europe may disregard the Safe Harbor decision of the European Commission when assessing whether the U.S. recipient of data ensures an adequate level of data protection required under EU law. Depending on the outcome, European and U.S. companies may not be able to rely on Safe Harbor to legitimise cross-border data transfers in the future. It will be interesting to see if the Court provides any rulings concerning the scope of European data protection.