Standard contractual clauses: what EU SCCs and UK SCCs are

What SCCs do in practice

Any time personal data about people in the EU goes to a country without an EU adequacy decision, the exporter needs a transfer tool. SCCs are the most common one. For an employer, typical transfers are payroll and HR records sent to a US parent company, an employer of record platform, or an HR system hosted abroad.

The 2021 clauses replaced the three older sets adopted under the 1995 Data Protection Directive. They are built in modules for different relationships: controller to controller, controller to processor, processor to processor and processor to controller. The Commission publishes a Q&A on using them (latest version dated May 25, 2022) and says it is developing more sets for importers whose processing is already directly subject to the GDPR.

EU SCCs vs UK SCCs

"UK SCC" in searches usually means one of these two UK tools. A company with staff in both the EU and the UK can sign the EU SCCs with the UK Addendum attached, rather than two separate agreements. See the UK employment page for the payroll side.

An example: an EOR team in Spain, Germany and the UK

You hire two people in Spain, one in Germany and one in the UK through an EOR with a US platform. Before the first payroll, check that the EOR's data processing terms include:

• the EU SCCs in the right module for the Spanish and German employees' data;
• the UK Addendum or IDTA for the UK employee's data;
• a list of subprocessors and the countries they sit in;
• a transfer impact assessment for the US and each subprocessor country.

Four employees, two legal regimes, one contract package. Costs for the hires themselves are on the Spain EOR page and the Germany EOR page.

SCCs vs other transfer terms

• Data processing agreement (DPA): the general contract with a processor; SCCs are often attached to it.
• Transfer impact assessment: the check that SCCs can work in the destination country.
• Binding corporate rules: approved internal rules for transfers inside one corporate group.

When choosing a provider, ask for these documents during the sales process. Compare providers in the best EOR providers and global payroll options.