EPP votes to safeguard citizens' security and data protection rights

SWIFT Agreement

"With its vote in favour of the SWIFT interim agreement, the EPP underscored its commitment to safeguard citizens' security and data protection rights." EPP Civil Liberties Coordinator, Simon Busuttil MEP said.

Busuttil was reacting to the vote taken today in the LIBE committee which narrowly rejected the interim agreement with 29 votes against, 23 votes in favour and 1 abstention. The EPP group voted in favour of the agreement.

Busuttil noted that the interim Swift agreement contains most of the European Parliament's requests on data protection made in its resolution last September and therefore, on balance, deserved to be supported.

However he lambasted the way in which the dossier was handled by the Council of Ministers which ignored the prerogatives of the European Parliament and set a bad example for inter-institutional cooperation under the Lisbon Treaty. He expressed hope that Parliament would be properly involved during the negotiations on the final agreement as contemplated in the treaty.

"It is established beyond doubt that intelligence-sharing through the exchange of data helps us in the fight against terrorism and this was our primary consideration in the vote." Busuttil said. "Nevertheless, we want intelligence-sharing to be conducted under even stricter data protection standards and that is why we want the definite Swfit agreement that will succeed this interim agreement to be better."

Busuttil augured that before the final vote due to be taken by the European Parliament in plenary next week, sufficient additional guarantees could be given by the Council Presidency in order to avoid a rejection of the interim agreement.

Additional information:

SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) operates a worldwide financial messaging network which exchanges messages between banks and other financial institutions. The majority of international interbank messages use the SWIFT network.

In the aftermath of September 11 2001 terror attacks, the Treasury Department of the United States of America addressed SWIFT, demanding to be provided with certain data stored in SWIFT's US data centre, which at that time also included inner EU bank transfers that had not relation to the US. This was done under the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP).

In September 2009, the European Parliament approved a Resolution in which it expressed its concerns (among others) regarding a possible abusive use of this data for economic and industrial espionage.

Despite these reservations by the EP, the negotiations carried on and were finalised in the interim agreement 30 November 2009, under the Swedish Presidency. The text was thereafter submitted to Parliament for its assent on 25 January 2010.

The agreement entered into force provisionally on 1st February 2010, whilst the Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) gave its opinion today by voting to reject the agreement. The European Parliament will take a vote in plenary on 8 February in Strasbourg.