A US Court Just Knocked Out the Watchdog Behind EU-US Data Sharing

The US Supreme Court ruled that the president can now fire the leaders of the Federal Trade Commission, ending its independence. Privacy group noyb says that breaks the reason Europe allows its data to flow to US companies, and it wants the EU to cancel the deal.

On June 29, 2026, the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the president can fire the leaders of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for any reason. That ends a long-standing rule, in place since 1935, that protected the FTC's independence. In plain terms, the FTC's bosses now answer to the president instead of acting on their own. The ruling affects roughly two dozen US agencies that were built to stay independent.

This is a big change inside the US. For Europe, it may matter even more.

Here is the link. Europe has strict privacy rules and normally blocks companies from sending people's personal data abroad unless the other country protects it properly. Since 2000, the EU has given the US a green light, letting European data flow freely to American companies like the big cloud providers. But EU law only allows that green light if an independent watchdog in the US is guarding the data. For years, that watchdog was the FTC.

Privacy group noyb, run by Austrian lawyer Max Schrems, says the green light no longer makes sense. According to noyb, the EU's 2023 data deal points to the "independent" FTC 259 times as the body keeping data safe. If the FTC is no longer independent, noyb argues, the deal's main promise is broken. The group has formally asked the EU to "orderly withdraw" its approval of the US.

None of this is new ground for Schrems. He already challenged and won against two earlier US data deals in the EU's top court, which struck them down over concerns about US surveillance and the lack of real legal protection for Europeans. The 2023 deal was the third try.