Friday’s announcement by the U.S. and European Union was that they have “in principle” agreed to a framework for cross-border data transfer, which will provide some relief to tech companies like Google. Meta Google.

Officials on both sides of the Atlantic have been working for over a decade to reach a compromise to replace Privacy Shield. The agreement allowed European companies to transfer their data to the U.S.

Privacy Shield was invalidated in July 2020This decision is a setback for Facebook and the other companies who had used this mechanism to manage their EU-U.S. data flows. Max Schrems was an Austrian privacy activist and claimed that the EU’s current framework failed to protect Europeans from U.S. surveillance.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, stated Friday that “predictable and trusted data flows between EU and US will be possible, protecting privacy and civil liberty,” but did not provide much detail about how this will work.

Meta will get some relief, as well as a number of other businesses that were left with legal uncertainty regarding how they transfer data across countries in the aftermath of Privacy Shield’s demise. Meta even suggests it may have to shut down Facebook and Instagram in EuropeOver the matter.

Guillaume Couneson from Linklaters, who is a Data Protection Partner, stated that “for companies with a presence both in the EU and US, it’s business-critical to have the ability to transfer personal information safely across the Atlantic”

Couneson said that the agreement is too new to be sure if it will survive the tests of time. Privacy Shield, itself, was the successor to Safe Harbor (an earlier EU-U.S. data agreement).

He stated that the new solution would have to stand up against the scrutiny of privacy advocates and supervisory authorities, just like the previous two.

It was also announced in conjunction with a separate agreementAs the Russian invasion threatens to destabilize Europe’s energy supply, the U.S. will be supplying energy.