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EU-USA: Council of the European Union (27 governments) put pressure on the European Parliament to "fast-track" the EU-USA SWIFT (transfer of all financial transactions in order to counter terrorism)

01 January 2010

Council of the European Union (27 governments) put pressure on the European Parliament to "fast-track" the EU-USA SWIFT (transfer of all financial transactions in order to counter terrorism) while the EU's Article 29 Working Party on data protection and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) express strong criticisms:

- Opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor (pdf)
- Opinion of the Article 29 Working Party (pdf)
- Draft Agreement (pdf)
- Draft Council Decision (21.1.10, pdf)

The EDPS concludes that the Interim SWIFT agreement "leave some dangerous lacunae". The "necessity" is not demonstrated and for legal certainty and foreseeability, "many important data protection elements are still absent or not clearly defined"; no limits are placed on the bulk transfer of data and:

"Furthermore, sharing of personal data with other national authorities as well as third countries is neither clearly defined not subject to appropriate guarantees.. [and] many data subjects rights... are either disregarded or have no concrete and clear way to be enforced"

The Article 29 Working Party observes that the scope of the definition of terrorism differs from that in the EU's Framework Decision (2002); there has been do assessment that the level of data protection meets EU standards; and it questions whether any form of redress "will prove feasible/practicable for European citizens in practice."