EU deems UK ‘adequate’ – Victory for UK businesses

On 28 June 2021 the EU Commission made an announcement on the adequacy decision of the United Kingdom concluding that the UK’s data protection legislation, which incorporates the EU’s GDPR, was adequate. This decision is very positive for the country and especially for business who operate in the UK but have clients, suppliers and stakeholders throughout the EU.

‘Adequacy’ is one of the grounds for EU based business to transfer data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) and will be the ground which enables UK businesses to seamlessly operate in the same way as before Brexit.

For the past six months, since the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, the UK and EU have been operating under a transitional period. The purpose of this period was to enable the EU Commission to determine whether the UK’s data protection regime was in alignment with the EU’s own data protection laws.

Whilst the UK was a member when the GDPR was put into place and incorporated the GDPR into its own legislation immediately and from the withdrawal date there had previously been concerns with how the UK had interpreted the GDPR for the purposes of national security and policing processing. However this, ultimately, was not an issue.

As such where you have EU clients you can continue working alongside them under the adequacy ground. Where you have any agreements in place with these clients they should make reference to this ground being relied upon in order for both parties to comply with their legal requirements to document the data protection terms.

If you think that this affects you and your business please feel free to get in touch with Ben Rose by telephone at 01273 447 065 or email benjamin.rose@acumenbusinesslaw.co.uk.

‍