Warren Ciantar

This article was written by​ Dr Michael Camilleri, Dr Warren Ciantar and Dr Claude Micallef-Grimaud. Transferring personal data from one EU Member State to another does not entail any formalities in addition to the basic and established requirements of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The reason for this is because all EU Member States are, by default, deemed to offer an 'adequate level of protection due to the robust and mostly harmonised privacy laws in place. The same can largely be said about countries within the European Economic Area (EEA). Transfers of personal data from the EU to the so-called…

This article was written by Dr. Warren Ciantar and Dr. Claude Micallef-Grimaud.On Thursday 16th July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union ('CJEU') ruled that the 'Privacy Shield' agreement allowing for the transfer of personal data between the European Union and the United States of America does not provide sufficient protection from US surveillance to EU citizens.To fully appreciate the context and ramifications of this decision, one must go back to 2013, when a young Austrian privacy activist by the name of Max Schrems raised a complaint against Facebook with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. The complaint centered around…

The European Court of Justice ('ECJ') has given its preliminary ruling following a request from the German Federal Court of Justice during a case between the Federation of Consumer Organisations ('the Federation') and Planet49 GMBH ('Planet49'), an online gaming company.  The issue concerned the consent of participants in a promotional lottery being organized by Planet49, to:i)    have their personal data transferred to the Planet49's partners and sponsors;ii)   the storage of their information and;iii)  the access of information stored on the users' terminal equipment (be it laptop, desktop, mobile device etc.).The facts of the case were as follows. In order to participate…