Building Better Regulatory Cooperation

The treatment of personal data has been an important factor in the U.S.–EU commercial relationship for a number of years, but increasingly has the potential to become a major source of contention, due to differing attitudes across the Atlantic towards data collection, storage and use by both commercial companies and security agencies. While U.S. authorities place the greatest emphasis on the need to access personal information such as biometrics, banking details and passenger name records to help in the fight against global terrorism, the EU believes strongly in the need to balance security concerns with the protection of civil liberties and an individual’s privacy.

This divergence in attitude and approach will require a sound regulatory solution if the long-term health of the transatlantic economy is to be maintained in the post 9/11 environment. The Program on Transatlantic Relations examines the problems U.S. and EU companies face in coping with security and privacy regulations; considering the need for clearer and more effective regulation of personal data collected for security purposes; drawing up a set of recommendations to address the gray areas in existing data protection legislation, and proposing solutions to the problems encountered by commercial companies in sharing personal data in the transatlantic marketplace. If agreed by the U.S. and EU, these could form the basis for international standards, thus addressing the problem of sharing data with third countries.