On 3 September 2025, in the so-called Latombe case, the General Court of the European Union (EGC) upheld the TADPF, an agreement between the EU and the US to allow GDPR-compliant international data transfers concluded in 2022/2023. The plaintiff, a French parliamentarian, will certainly appeal to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which means that the privacy requirements for transferring personal data of EU residents to the United States will not be finally clarified for some time.
Today’s decision marks a change of direction following the so-called ‘Schrems’ rulings of 2015 and 2020, which declared the two previous regulations, Safe Harbour and PrivacyShield, to be invalid because US law did not provide sufficient protection for the personal data of EU residents. After the Biden administration had now made a third (!) attempt with the TADPF to create a level of protection in the US that was adequate for the GDPR (in particular by creating a framework for a court review of the data access given to government authorities), this had recently been undermined again under US president Trump. Accordingly, the Latombe ruling had been eagerly awaited.
Until the ECJ makes a final decision in this matter, the TADPF remains fully applicable. Nevertheless, businesses should continue to look for ways process the data of their European users within the EEA, since European data protection authorities are applying strict standards when reviewing data transfers to the United States, despite the existing legal framework. A number of major online platforms, from hosting and marketing to AI services, offer so-called ‘EU residency’ solutions for this very purpose. However, based on our reviews of these services for our clients, we know that not all of them comply with the GDPR requirements, so caution is advised.
Finally, the remaining GDPR adequacy decisions for individual jurisdictions with a high level of data protection, such as the United Kingdom, Israel, Korea, Japan, and New Zealand, remain unaffected.
(Dr. Lukas Mezger, UNVERZAGT Rechtsanwälte)