EU under pressure to cancel data adequacy agreement with Israel
Topic
Country/Region
24 June 2025
Israel's "combination of legal reforms, unchecked intelligence access, and the operational deployment of EU-linked data in repressive practices further undermines the credibility of Israel’s adequacy status," warns a letter to the European Commission signed by 17 organisations, including Statewatch.
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Personal data can be transmitted freely between the EU and Israel, due to the European Commission's decision last year to reconfirm the country's "adequacy status".
That status bestows a recognition from the EU that another country's data protection laws and practices are essentially equivalent to those set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
A letter sent to the European Commission by civil society organisations in April last year raised concerns that "problems with the rule of law and practices of mass surveillance by security and intelligence agencies call the adequacy agreement into question."
The new letter (pdf), coordinated by European Digital Rights, reasserts the call for the Commission to withdraw Israel's adequacy status.
It says there are six key issues that undermine Israel's status as a country to which personal data can be transferred freely:
- the rule of law in Israel;
- the scope and substance of Israel’s current and future privacy and data protection legal framework;
- the role of national security provisions and entities;
- onward transfers beyond Israel’s internationally-recognised borders;
- the review procedure; and
- the application of the Adequacy framework in the context of Israel's involvement in what the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called ‘grave breaches of in ternational law committed over the past year and a half’. Respect for international law is a precursor for any state to be deemed adequate for the processing of personal data.
Read the full letter: Re: Continued Lack of Response on Israel’s Adequacy Status and Urgent Need for Reassessment in Light of New Developments (24 June 2025, pdf)
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Further reading
From Malpensa to Tel Aviv: Italian police use Israeli software to spy on anti-deportation activsts
In March last year, four people were arrested after stopping a deportation flight to Morocco leaving Milan's Malpensa airport. When they got their phones back from the police, they found a strange file – one connected with spying products designed by the Israeli firm Cellebrite.
Call to suspend EU-Israel agreement over violations of Palestinian rights
Statewatch is one of 160 organisations that are calling for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement due to ongoing human rights violations in Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Association Agreement is conditional upon "respect for human rights and democratic principles" by both the EU and Israel, says a statement published today by the organisations. It calls for suspension of the Agreement "until the EU is confident that nothing in its relations with Israel contributes in any way - political, financial, military, technical, trade, anything - to the continuation of the occupation and of the denial of the rights of the Palestinian people."
EU-Israel data agreement rings alarm bells
At the beginning of the year, the European Commission approved the continuation of 11 personal data adequacy agreements with non-EU states. The approval allowed the continuation of unrestricted data flows with entities in the EU. In an open letter to the Commission, Statewatch and 10 other organisations raise a number of concerns regarding the agreement with Israel, arguing that problems with the rule of law and practices of mass surveillance by security and intelligence agencies call the adequacy agreement into question.
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