Today the EU decided to give me a giant present

For those of you who have spent years dealing with the nightmarish process of carefully putting EU user data in its own silo, often in its own infrastructure in a different EU region, it looks like the nightmare might be coming to an end. See the new press release here: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3721

Some specific details I found really interesting in the full report (which is a doozy of a read(: https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2023-07/Adequacy%20decision%20EU-US%20Data%20Privacy%20Framework.pdf

The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework introduces new binding safeguards to address all the concerns raised by the European Court of Justice, including limiting access to EU data by US intelligence services to what is necessary and proportionate, and establishing a Data Protection Review Court (DPRC), to which EU individuals will have access.

US companies can certify their participation in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework by committing to comply with a detailed set of privacy obligations. This could include, for example, privacy principles such as purpose limitation, data minimisation and data retention, as well as specific obligations concerning data security and the sharing of data with third parties.

To certify under the EU-U.S. DPF (or re-certify on an annual basis), organisations are required to publicly declare their commitment to comply with the Principles, make their privacy policies available and fully implement them67. As part of their (re-)certification application, organisations have to submit information to the DoC on, inter alia, the name of the relevant organisation, a description of the purposes for
which the organisation will process personal data, the personal data that will be covered by the certification, as well as the chosen verification method, the relevant independent recourse mechanism and the statutory body that has jurisdiction to enforce compliance with the Principles68

Organisations can receive personal data on the basis of the EU-U.S. DPF from the date they are placed on the DPF list by the DoC. To ensure legal certainty and avoid 'false claims', organisations certifying for the first time are not allowed to publicly refer to their adherence to the Principles before the DoC has determined that the organisation's certification submission is complete and added the organisation to the DPF List69. To be allowed to continue to rely on the EU-U.S. DPF to receive personal data from the Union, such organisations must annually re-certify their participation in the framework. When an organisation leaves the EU-U.S. DPF for any reason, it must remove all statements implying that the organisation continues to participate in the Framework

So it looks similar to Privacy Shield but with more work being done on the US side to meet the EU requirements. This is all super new and we'll need to see how this shakes out in the practical implementation, but I'm extremely hopefully for less friction-filled interactions between EU and US tech companies.