The EU and Japan agreed to create the world's largest area of safe data flows

Once the adequacy decisions will be adopted that will establish the world`s largest area of safe and free data transfers enhancing the commercial and economic relations between Japan and the EU based on a high level of protection of personal data.

With this mutual adequacy arrangement “the EU and Japan affirm that, in the digital era, promoting high privacy standards and facilitating international trade go hand in hand.”

Japan has also committed to live up to European data protectionstandards including:

• establish a complaint-handling mechanism, administered and supervised by the Japanese independent data protection authority, to investigate and resolve complaints from Europeans regarding access to their data by Japanese public authorities; and
• implementing a set of rules providing individuals in the EU whose personal data are transferred to Japan, with additional safeguards (e.g., protection of sensitive data, conditions under which EU data can be further transferred from Japan to another third country, exercise of individual rights to access and rectification) that will bridge several differences between the two data protection systems.

In conclusion, Japanese and EU companies will obtain access to each other’s markets with equivalent data processing and data protection regulatory conditions, although, Japanese companies shall make their data processing mechanisms compliant with EU standards in order to fully take advantage of the new commercial opportunities. The adequacy decision is expected to be finalized by the end of 2018 and until then the EU based Japanese companies must ensure the legality of their data transfer to Japan under an adequate safeguard of the GDPR.