Updated Standard Contractual Clauses

On June 4, 2021, the European Commission issued new standard contractual clauses (SCCs). This highly anticipated update aligns the SCCs to the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements and better enables international data transfers in our digital age.

SCCs provide one of a few legal mechanisms on which businesses can rely to transfer European resident personal data to other regions around the world, like the United States, that are not considered to provide “adequate” data protection under the GDPR. The new SCCs resolve practical issues that arose from the legacy set of SCCs, which did not account for modern complex data transfers.

To prepare for the transition to new SCCs, we recommend businesses begin inventorying current, executed contracts that rely on the legacy set, including vendor, customer, and intracompany transfer agreements. Thereafter, companies should map out plans to update affected contracts prior to the legacy SCCs’ sunset date, after which the old clauses will cease to be effective.