Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen agreed ‘we’ll fix this and we’ll fix it today’, America’s ambassador to bloc tells Dublin event

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spurred US and EU leaders to strike an immediate agreement on complex cross-­border data transfers, according to a top American diplomat.

The US ambassador to the EU, Mark Gitenstein, said tackling fall-out from the so-called Schrems case – named after privacy campaigner Max Schrems – was on the agenda at the first meeting of US president Joe Biden and the EU Commission in March 2022, right at the start of the war.

Mr Biden and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen agreed the ability to share digital data between the blocks had to be regarded as a priority.

“They both said we’ll fix this and we’ll fix this today,” Mr Gitenstein told a meeting of hundreds of US and Irish business leaders at an event at the US ambassador’s residence in Dublin to mark 100 years of US-Irish ­diplomatic relations.

He said he had told another official at the 2022 summit: “We cannot shut down all transatlantic data flows in the middle of a war.”

Mr Gitenstein was speaking on a panel alongside outgoing EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness at the event.

Immediately after the summit, Mr Biden and Ms von der Leyen issued a joint statement announcing a commitment to create a new Transatlantic Data Privacy Framework.

They said the new framework was based on an “unprecedented commitment” on the US side to implement reforms that would strengthen the privacy and civil liberties protections for EU citizens applicable to US signals intelligence activities – otherwise known as intelligence services. The resulting transfer arrangement has become the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF), which is currently in place.

Previously, the Schrems case had successfully challenged a lack of protections for EU citizens when their data was shared across border with entities in the US and it led to the striking down in 2015 of the then EU-US Safe Harbour Framework for data flows.

A successor arrangement that aimed to ensure data could continue to cross the Atlantic, dubbed the Privacy Shield, was struck down in 2020 by a second legal challenge.

The ambassador’s comments indicate that a shared data environment was regarded as a security priority for policy­makers as well as a commercial concern for the thousands of businesses, including in particular big US tech firms, that process European users’ data in their home country.

Meanwhile, Ms McGuinness cited co-operation between the US and EU on implementation of sanctions against Russia as an important joint enterprise.

The approach is hurting the Russian economy, she said.

“Our sanctions do mean something when they are implemented properly,” Ms McGuinness added.

Mr Gitenstein said a joint action by EU and US executives had raised $50bn (€46bn) for Ukraine’s war effort using the income stream from seized Russian sovereign wealth, including $180bn in EU banks.

The $5bn a year in income generated by the frozen assets had been successfully collateralised – or borrowed against – to raise the pot, he said.

Reporting on:independent.ie