European court invalidates EU-US Safe Harbor pact

The Safe Harbor agreement on which many businesses rely for the transatlantic transfer of personal data is invalid, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled.

While the decision will affect companies like Facebook and Google, it is bad news for small and medium-size companies transferring data from the EU to the U.S., said Mike Weston, CEO of data science consultancy Profusion.

"American companies are going to have to restructure how they manage, store and use data in Europe and this will take a lot of time and money," he said.

The CJEU  provided a summary of the ruling, the full text of which will be published later.

The court was asked to rule on a matter of law in a case relating to Facebook's transfer of EU citizens' personal data to the U.S.

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