Following the calls by the Article 29 Working Party to explicitly include the BCR concept in the new EU data protection legal framework and Viviane Reding’s public support in this regard, the Working
Following the calls by the Article 29 Working Party to explicitly include the BCR concept in the new EU data protection legal framework and Viviane Reding’s public support in this regard, the Working Party’s emphasis is now on streamlining the BCR approval process.
In order to achieve this, the Working Party’s BCR sub-group is taking two concrete actions in this respect:
1) First of all, the sub-group is currently working towards devising a more uniform way of reviewing BCR applications, so that the process is identical across EU Member States.
2) At the same time, the Article 29 Working Party Chairman, Jacob Kohnstamm, has written to the other EU data protection authorities to encourage them to join the mutual recognition countries as soon as possible.
In addition, BCR is high on the agenda of the European Commission’s reform of the data protection directive. Not only is the Commission committed to recognising BCR as an adequacy mechanism in the new directive, but it is also considering incorporating a process whereby the approval of a set of BCR by two EU data protection authorities would automatically allow the data transfers to take place from any Member State without any further transfer authorisation.
In order to achieve this, the Working Party’s BCR sub-group is taking two concrete actions in this respect:
1) First of all, the sub-group is currently working towards devising a more uniform way of reviewing BCR applications, so that the process is identical across EU Member States.
2) At the same time, the Article 29 Working Party Chairman, Jacob Kohnstamm, has written to the other EU data protection authorities to encourage them to join the mutual recognition countries as soon as possible.
In addition, BCR is high on the agenda of the European Commission’s reform of the data protection directive. Not only is the Commission committed to recognising BCR as an adequacy mechanism in the new directive, but it is also considering incorporating a process whereby the approval of a set of BCR by two EU data protection authorities would automatically allow the data transfers to take place from any Member State without any further transfer authorisation.