European Commission adopts new adequacy decision for safe and trusted EU-US data flows
The European Commission has decided that the United States has got suitable systems in place to protect personal data of European citizens, and it’s just as good as what the European Union has. This means that if your businesses is transferring personal data via platforms such as GA4 from the EU to U.S. companies, you don’t have to worry about adding extra safeguards to protect the data of your customers.
In March last year, the French data privacy regulatory body, CNIL and Austrian Data Protection Authority ruled EU-US data transfers to Google Analytics as illegitimate after the invalidation of the Privacy Shield. This caused a number of French and Austrian companies to abandon plans to migrate from Universal Analytics to GA4, instead opting for alternatives such as Piwik Pro and Pirsch, which met CNIL’s approval.
Talks of a new data transfer deal eased concerns regarding Google Analytics as well as other big US platforms that handled EU citizens’ data. That deal has now been ratified by the European Commission, as of 10 July 2023, which means businesses in the EU can continue using GA4.
U.S.-based Analytics providers aren’t the only ones breathing easy now. AWS, Microsoft Azure, Meta Advertising, Twitter, and even Google Ads would have been affected adversely in the absence of this framework. Platforms would have been forced to restructure how they handle data originating in the EU, or pull out of the region. Unfortunately for their European competitors, this is no longer the case.
