The European parliament on Thursday urged EU nations to delay a planned EU accord allowing the United States to use data about European citizens in anti-terror investigations. EU interior ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday - their last official talks this year - hope to endorse an interim agreement permitting US justice authorities to data from the interbank transfer service SWIFT.
But parliamentarians want the ministers to hold off for at least 24 hours until the new reforming Lisbon Treaty enters force, which gives the assembly more say in justice affairs. However Washington fears that a security vacuum could be created without a new agreement, with SWIFT set to change the way it operates by the end of the year, depriving US authorities of potentially vital data.
"It would be a scandal if the (EU) council was to rush through a decision on this deeply flawed agreement on the very last day before the Lisbon Treaty comes into force on December 1," Greens bloc leaders said in a statement. The president of the parliament, sitting in Strasbourg Thursday, said he planned to write to the 27 EU ministers to encourage them not to endorse the new agreement this time around.
The primary concern was that personal information, possibly including data from electronic bank payments, could be transferred to US authorities and handed on to other governments. The Society for World-wide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), based near Brussels, deals with trillions of dollars in global transactions daily between nearly 8,000 financial institutions in 200-plus countries.
In a major move, SWIFT plans by the end of the year to set up a mirror site exchange of information between a database in the Netherlands and Switzerland. A separate system will operate between Switzerland and the United States. The change could leave the United States reliant on EU nations and laws for access to the information.
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