The European Commission yesterday announced that Argentina
provides an adequate level of protection of personal data. This
will allow personal data to flow freely from the EU to Argentina,
without additional safeguards being needed to meet the requirements
of the EU Data Protection Directive.
Similar decisions have already been adopted concerning the data
protection regimes in Switzerland and Hungary, the "safe harbor"
arrangement in the United States and the Canadian Personal
Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
In fact, the Commission's decision was informally made several
months ago, but the formal announcement was only made
yesterday.
The Commission's decision has been taken in line with the Data
Protection Directive which provides that the transfer of personal
data from Member States to non-Member States may in principle take
place if the non-EU country in question ensures an adequate level
of protection.
The Commission may adopt decisions determining that such
adequate protection is provided by a given country. This increases
legal certainty for companies in the European Union and makes the
export of personal data to the country concerned easier, thus
contributing to the free flow of information, which is one of the
objectives of the Directive.
