The European Court of Justice on Thursday canceled a 2016 agreement between the EU and the United States. It allowed Americans to access and process the personal data of Europeans. A shock for the United States, which will have to adapt its laws to make them more protective.

It is a historic decision made by the European Court of Justice on Thursday: the personal data of Europeans can no longer be processed in the United States. 

This decision is an earthquake. It sets up an agreement that has existed since 2016 and which allows the transfer to the United States of your personal data, for example data that you provide when you register on a platform like Uber, on a social network like Facebook, when you book a plane ticket, etc. To access all these online services, you have no choice, you must provide data about yourself, and this data, then, ends up on servers in the United States, therefore under an agreement concluded with the European Union.

And it is therefore this agreement that European justice has canceled.

The European judges invoke a massive argument for this: they say that our private data is much less well protected in the United States than in Europe. Why ? Because in the United States, the law allows American surveillance services, such as the NSA, to have unlimited access to data, including Europeans, which is stored there. The NSA can access all the data that you have communicated to Facebook for example. Whereas in Europe, the law, on the contrary, protects everyone's privacy much more strictly.

So there is no longer any question of transferring the data of millions of European citizens to the United States. The consequences of this decision are enormous. One of two things: either the United States changes its laws and adopts the same standards as in Europe. Either the giants of Silicon Valley like Facebook or Google will have to store all the data they collect on us in Europe.

In fact, Europe does like the United States: it imposes its law beyond its borders.

Yes and besides, the European Commission Thursday evening explained that the ball was now in the American court: it is in the United States to adopt laws as protective as ours, without what, no question of allowing the transfer data in the United States.

For the record, this whole affair is due to the fight of a young Austrian lawyer of 30 years, Max Shrems: he has been fighting Facebook for seven years, since he was a student, denouncing the attacks protection of privacy. He has become their bane. He won there, with derisory means, an incredible victory, it was David against Goliath. And it is thanks to his relentless fight that the private data of the 450 million European citizens can no longer be looted and exploited without control: the story of this Max Shrems, remember his name, would make an excellent scenario… in Hollywood.