On 16 June 2015, Finn Myrstad (Head of the Digital Services Section at the Norwegian Consumer Council and EU Co‐Chair of TACD’s Information Society Policy Committee) and Anna Fielder (Chair of Privacy International and TACD’s Senior Policy Advisor) spoke at a public hearing that was jointly organised by the INTA and LIBE Committees of the European Parliament. The topic of the hearing was “Trade agreements and data flows: Safeguarding the EU data protection standards.”

A number of trade agreements that are currently being negotiated – including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and US – touch upon areas that have an impact on transfers of information between the partner countries. This raises important questions about to which extent these negotiations respect the EU’s acquis on data privacy.

In their presentations, Finn and Anna underlined the TACD position that personal information transfers should not be included in TTIP. Trade agreements are about economic priorities and lowering barriers to trade, not about safeguarding fundamental rights. Citizen’s on both sides of the Atlantic ask for more privacy protections, while more and more countries around the world implement holistic data protection laws.

Please find the presentations here:
Finn Myrstad’s presentation – Trade agreements and data flows
Anna Fielder’s speech – Trade agreements and data flows
Anna Fielder’s presentation – Trade agreements and data flows