The group of European Union data protection authorities, known as the Article 29 Working Party (WP29), has approved AWS’ Data Processing Agreement, which the company said would help reassure customers it applies high standard of security and privacy in handling their data, whether moved inside or out of the EU.

Amazon said its inclusion of standardised model clauses within its customer contracts, and the WP29’s signoff of its contract, should help give customers more confidence in how it treats their data.

“The security, privacy, and protection of our customer’s data is our number one priority,” said Werner Vogels, chief technology officer, Amazon.

“Providing customers a DPA that has been approved by the EU data protection authorities is another way in which we are giving them assurances that they will receive the highest levels of data protection from AWS. We have spent a lot of time building tools, like security controls and encryption, to give customers the ability to protect their infrastructure and content.”

“We will always strive to provide the highest level of data security for AWS customers in the EU and around the world,” he added.

AWS already boasts a number of highly regulated clients in the US and Europe, and has made strides to appease the security and data-sovereignty-conscious customers. The company has certified to ISO 27001, SOC 1, 2, 3 and PCI DSS Level 1, is approved to provide its services to a number of banks in Europe, and is working with the CIA to build a massive private cloud platform.

More recently AWS added another EU availability zone based in Franfkurt; it operates one in Dublin.

The rubber-stamping seems to have come as welcome news to some European members of parliament, which have for the past few years been actively working on data protection reform in the region.

“The EU has the highest data protection standards in the world and it is very important that European citizens’ data is protected,” said Antanas Guoga, Member of the European Parliament.

“I believe that the Article 29 Working Party decision to approve the data proceeding agreement put forward by Amazon Web Services is a step forward to the right direction. I am pleased to see that AWS puts an emphasis on the protection of European customer data. I hope this decision will also help to drive further innovation in the cloud computing sector across the EU,” Guoga added.