Věra Jourová, EU Commissioner for Justice, and Haruhi Kumazawa, Commissioner of the Personal Information Protection Commission of Japan released a joint statement following their meeting of July 4 on the state of play of the dialogue on data protection.
They welcomed the work carried out over the course of the last months by the Secretariat of the Personal Information Protection Commission of Japan and the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers of the European Commission, which has significantly strengthened the mutual understanding of the EU and Japanese data protection rules.
On the basis of that work, they acknowledged that the recent reforms of their respective privacy legislation have further increased the convergence between their two systems. This offers new opportunities to further facilitate smooth and mutual data flows, in particular through simultaneous finding of an adequate level of protection by both sides.
With this in mind, they decided to intensify their efforts towards achieving this goal by early 2018, including by addressing relevant differences, building on the enhanced convergence between their two systems.