Japan asks the EU and UK to maintain the free transfer of data post Brexit.

The government of Japan has published a memo addressed to the European Union and the United Kingdom, through which it asks the two parties to ensure predictability and ‘maintain the current business environment’ in the context of UK’s exit from the EU. The memo notes that Japanese companies concentrated in the UK are concerned, among others, over possible restrictions on the cross-border transfer of personal data between the UK and the EU, which ‘could affect ICT businesses conducting data centre operations based on their establishment in the UK with declining demand from data center users such as cloud operators managing personal data within the EU’. The UK is asked to maintain the current level of information protection and the free transfer of data, in case it establishes its own legislation distinct from the EU’s.