Protocol amending the Agreement between the European Union and Japan on an Economic Partnership with regard to the free flow of data

between the European Union and Japan for an Economic Partnership. The EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which entered into force in 2019, provided for the EU and Japan to assess the need to include provisions on cross-border data flows within three years of the EPA's entry into force. The outcome of these negotiations confirms that the EU and Japan remain committed to the rules-based international trading system and their joint determination to define global data flow rules that respect shared values and respective regulatory approaches. In this way, it is also more likely that the EU's regulatory approach will eventually be adopted in other future multilateral standards. In addition, this agreement will contribute to deepening the partnership with Japan, which is a crucial geopolitical partner of the EU in the Indo-Pacific region. It is, however, regrettable that the agreed text is unclear and that the wording of the agreed protocol does not fully reflect the 2018 EU horizontal provisions on cross-border data flows, data protection and privacy.

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