A surprise Christmas present for DPOs was delivered on 24 December in the form of a time-limited “bridging mechanism” as part of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) says that good progress has been made with the European Commission on the adequacy agreement. The EU Commission is expected to start the formal process soon for adopting the adequacy decisions for the UK – a process which could take two to four months.

The DCMS intends to start delivering, new UK adequacy decisions in the coming months. But any changes to UK data protection legislation and its international transfers regime need to be notified to the EU under this bridging agreement.