EU-UK Brexit negotiations: Update on data protection

The UK government has now published a draft legal text of a proposed Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU. Other draft documents published or updated yesterday include a Draft Agreement on Law Enforcement and Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters, which includes issues such as processing of Passenger Name Records (PNR).

Michel Barnier’s remarks on 15 May on the EU-UK Brexit negotiations claim “fundamental obstacles” that the UK is not wanting to commit to ‘protecting fundamental rights and individual freedoms resulting from the European Convention on Human Rights’.

‘It insists on lowering current standards and deviating from agreed mechanisms of data protection – to the point that it is even asking the Union to ignore its own law and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice on passenger data (PNR rules).That is of course impossible,’ Barnier says.

On 13 March, the UK government published a policy paper on the framework for adequacy talks, but there has been no further information made publicly available.

See:

• UK government’s approach to negotiations with the European Union
• UK policy papers for adequacy talks
• Michel Barnier’s speech