France’s data regulator CNIL has issued some recommendations for French services that handle health data, as Mediapart first reported. Those services should avoid using American cloud hosting companies altogether, such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

Those recommendations follow a landmark ruling by Europe’s top court in July. The ruling, dubbed Schrems II, struck down the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Shield. Under the Privacy Shield, companies could outsource data processing from the EU to the U.S. in bulk. Due to concerns over U.S. surveillance laws, that mechanism is no longer allowed.

The CNIL is going one step further by saying that services and companies that handle health data should also avoid doing business with American companies — it’s not just about processing European data in Europe. Once again, this is all about avoiding falling under U.S. regulation and rulings.

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