On 23 January 2019, the EU Commission adopted its adequacy decision on Japan, allowing personal data to flow freely between Europe and Japan.
The adequacy decision started to apply as of January 23. The same will happen on the Japanese side.
The adequacy decision includes:
- a set of Supplementary Rules to strengthen the protection of sensitive data, the exercise of individual rights and the conditions under which EU data can be further transferred from Japan to another third country. These Supplementary Rules will be binding on Japanese companies and enforceable by the Japanese independent data protection authority;
- assurances that access by Japanese public authorities for criminal law enforcement and national security purposes will be limited to “what is necessary and proportionate and subject to independent oversight and effective redress mechanisms;”
- a complaint-handling mechanism of Europeans complaints regarding access to their data by Japanese public authorities. The mechanism will be supervised by the Japanese independent data protection authority.
Press release at http://europa.eu…
For more information and assistance on privacy, data protection, and GDPR, Francesca Giannoni-Crystal and Federica Romanelli.
Originally published at Technethics on January 2019