On Oct. 7, 2022 President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14086 on “Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities,” which serves as the first step toward restoring the free flow of European personal data to U.S. businesses, ending years of uncertainty for the international business community.

If all goes according to plan, EO 14086’s enhanced safeguards will lead the European Commission (EC) to adopt an “adequacy” decision, allowing U.S. businesses that agree to abide by a set of privacy safeguards embodied in a new “EU-US Data Privacy Framework” (the DPF) to receive European personal data without continuing to engage in expensive and time-consuming alternative transfer mechanisms.