By Cory Bennett and Katie Bo Williams - 02/29/16 07:50 PM EST
The first concrete details of the agreement to allow private companies to transfer data between Europe and the US, proposed at the start of February, were released on 29 February, and immediately came under criticism. This may rattle US companies, which have been in legal limbo since October 2015 when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) quashed the previous data-sharing agreement due to concerns that the US would fail to adequately protect Europeans’ data. A $260bn digital services trade across the Atlantic is at stake; even if the agreement can be finalised it is still expected to come before the ECJ, lengthening the time that US companies will have to wait for a final verdict.