EU vows to avert data chaos as top court readies key ruling

European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders at a news conference on EU rules on data protection and the new EU Strategy on victims' rights, in Brussels, Belgium, June 24. — Olivier Hoslet/Pool via Reuters

The European Union’s justice chief played down warnings that the wheels of commerce could grind to a halt after a landmark EU court ruling this week on trans-Atlantic data transfers.

The European Union has done its homework to prevent a repeat of the turmoil of five years ago when the bloc’s top court threw out a data-transfer process that thousands of companies relied on to ship commercial data to and from the United States, Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said in an interview.