Nearly two years after the European Union’s top court overturned a transatlantic agreement regulating data flows between the U.S. and the EU after finding American “safeguards on Europeans’ data to be insufficient,” President Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have announced a preliminary accord “to allow data about Europeans to be stored on U.S. soil.” [WSJ]

The deal, which would replace the overruled EU-US Privacy Shield, heads off “a growing threat to thousands of companies’ trans-Atlantic operations”—particularly for cloud computing operators and social media giants whose massive data storage and transfer operations “were facing mounting legal challenges” in the EU. [WSJ]

Friday’s announcement was an important step in enabling regular data flows between the U.S. and EU, but it was only a step. Details of “how exactly the two sides have managed to close the gap between what remain two very differently oriented legal systems” remain unclear, and whatever the final language, it is sure to face “fresh legal challenges to test how robust it is when it comes to ensuring that EU citizens’ rights are adequately protected when their data flows to the US.” [TechCrunch]