WASHINGTON – September 23, 2021 – The Global Data Alliance has issued a new report on the benefits that an enhanced Privacy Shield will bring to the European Union and the United States. The report describes and quantifies economic and non-economic benefits that an enhanced Privacy Shield can bring in areas relating to transatlantic privacy, regulatory compliance, innovation, cybersecurity, and COVID-19 recovery.

“An enhanced Privacy Shield agreement will reinvigorate a crucial tool for strengthening transatlantic privacy protections and facilitating responsible data transfers,” said Joseph Whitlock, Director, Policy at BSA | The Software Alliance. “With those goals in mind, we support the further intensification of EU and US efforts to finalize an enhanced Privacy Shield agreement that addresses the concerns raised in the Schrems II case.”

An enhanced Privacy Shield can strengthen an EU-US digital ecosystem that fosters growth, innovation, and high standards of data responsibility. The central beneficiaries of the Privacy Shield program have been millions of EU and US citizens, whose personal information was protected as thousands of companies adopted the privacy controls required by the program, which are paired with government commitments on access to data. In mid-2019, over 5,000 companies – primarily small- and medium-sized enterprises – participated in Privacy Shield. Since that time, some 1,500 companies have left the program, representing an attrition rate of 30 percent.

Find the Global Data Alliance’s new primer “The Enhanced Privacy Shield: How It Would Benefit the EU and the US” here.