The European Commission has announced that it would start a process to allow a continued flow of police and financial data from the EU to Britain for the next four years.
The decision follows the fact that Britain’s data protection laws were in line with the European Union’s, even though EU data protection laws no longer bind Britain following its departure from the bloc in 2020. Britain welcomed the Commission’s move as a reflection of its commitment to high data protection standards.
According to Reuters, London has already incorporated the EU regulations into its own laws on personal data protection and the EU will now check again only in four years whether they have diverged from the EU before another extension.
Still, before the EU formally grants the adequacy status to British laws, it needs to consult its European Data Protection Board and get a green light from a committee composed of representatives of EU member states’ governments.
This should be completed before the end of June 2021, when an interim arrangement for data flows after Brexit ends.
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