TACD warns that recent developments threaten the independence of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The European Commission announced that it will assess its impact on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. Following this assessment, TACD calls on the European Commission to take appropriate actions to ensure the protection of people’s personal data.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Trump v. Slaughter case means that the U.S. President has the unprecedented power to fire members of more than 20 independent federal agencies, including the FTC, without cause. TACD considers that this ruling compromises the political independence of the FTC.

In addition to being crucial to ensure U.S. consumers are protected against unfair business practices, the independence of the FTC is the cornerstone of the deal that enables people’s personal data to flow between the EU and the U.S. Oversight over data protection in the third country must be done by an independent authority and this is one of the criteria to assess if a third country, in this case the U.S., is able to afford EU citizens essentially equivalent protections to the EU’s ones.

Maria Villegas Bravo, Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and the U.S. co-chair of the TACD Digital Committee:  

“As an independent executive agency, the FTC was designed to have this insulation from the political whims of the President. From the moment the Trump administration took power, though, this independence has been called into question. The agency has scaled back the scope of its work in investigating tech companies and enforcing our existing privacy laws. Several key investigations of data abuses have been placed on the backburner, and the agency has signalled that it is stepping back from AI regulation. TACD is deeply concerned about what this ruling means for the agency and for consumers.”

Linn Høgåsen, Senior Digital Policy Officer at the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), and the European co-chair of the TACD Digital Committee: 

“Independent authorities and regulators are key for consumer trust and protection – and to ensure that the EU-US framework delivers an equivalent level of protection in practice, as required by EU law. Consumers need a strong EU-US transfer framework, something the recent Supreme Court judgment in the US calls into question. The EU Commission must now re-assess whether the FTC is sufficiently independent, and take appropriate action.”