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The European Commission is set to present a new draft of its data-exchange pact with the US, the Privacy Shield, in early July.  EU justice commissioner Vera Jourova told EUobserver in a recent interview that the most contentious issues had been agreed by Washington and Brussels.  These concerned access to data by US security services and bulk collection of people’s personal information.  “We reached an accord on more precise listing of cases when bulk collection can occur and a better definition of how our American partners understand the difference between bulk collection which may be justified and mass surveillance without any purpose, which is not tolerable”, she said.  “These specific points have already been finished and put down in written form”.  The shield is to replace the 15 year-old Safe Harbour pact that failed to protect the privacy of EU nationals whose data was transferred to firms, such as Facebook, based in the US.  The EU Court of Justice (ECJ) invalidated the harbour treaty last year, due in part, to revelations by Edward Snowden, a former US intelligence contractor, of mass-scale US snooping on Europeans. The EU commission and the US, after two years of talks, proposed the shield treaty as a replacement earlier this year. But the EU's main regulatory body on privacy, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, criticised the draft in the strongest possible terms.  The body is composed of EU states’ national data supervisors and EU officials.  Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, its chair, said in April that the shield would fail to protect people's data. “The possibility that is left in the shield and its annexes for bulk collection … is not acceptable," she said.  She sent the draft back to the EU commission, which is now set to present the updated version. That text becomes binding the moment it is adopted by the 28 commissioners, with no subsequent input from the EU Council or MEPs.