EU and US Conclude Swift Agreement

The United States and European Union signed an agreement giving the American government agencies access to all bank transactions within Europe, in the name of anti-terrorism intelligence.

The Swift agreement, named after the Belgian-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication that runs the eponymous intra-bank network, was accepted by the EU on Monday 28th June 2010. It allows American collection of data within Europe and the transfer of information about suspicious transactions to the US. An EU official based in the US will maintain oversight for privacy and against misuse.

The agreement follows an earlier interim agreement to give the US data on all transactions, which was signed last November ahead of changes to the Swift architecture. Originally, Swift had two datacentres — one in the US and one in the EU — which mirrored all bank transactions. From 1 January, 2010, a third datacentre was used in Switzerland to maintain redundancy without having EU data in the US, which would have been against European privacy law.

The interim agreement was subsequently opposed by groups within the EU parliament, including the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), who forced a parliamentary rejection of the agreement in February. The S&D amendments were then incorporated.

The European Parliament has adopted the Swift agreement on Thursday, 8th July 2010 allowing sharing EU citizens' bank data with the US authorities. The text was adopted with 484 votes in favour and 109 against. The supporters of the current version claim that the new text was significantly improved by gaining a number of important concessions from the US. These include the limitation of bulk data being transfer to the US or the role of Europol in overseeing the transfer process.

However, there are concerns that the current agreement does not meet the European privacy standards. There is no prior judicial ruling required for transfer of data, the definition of "terrorism" is very broad and there is still no legal redress available for EU citizens in the US against data transfers or the possibly serious consequences thereof. Also, in practice, Swift can't currently limit data searches to specific individuals or single transactions. Actually, it will have to (and has in the past) transfer data about all transactions from a certain country or a certain bank on a certain date. There have been reports that the US Treasury has received up to 25% of all Swift transactions, which number in the billions each year.

As regards the Europol's position, the EU body is far from a judicial authority and it is now authorized to request information from the US searches in the transferred data, which drastically reduces any incentive to limit the transferred amount of data in the first place.

This agreement entered into force on Sunday, 1st August 2010. The current text will be valid for five years and then automatically extends for one year at a time. In order to terminate the agreement, one of the parties has to take an initiative. Even if it is terminated, all transferred data will remain at the disposal of US authorities. The data provided to the American authorities will be subject to a retention period of five years.

The Agreement between the EU and the USA on the processing and transfer of financial messaging data from the EU to the USA for purposes of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program can be read here.

European Conservatives & Reformist Group Abstains On New European Commission

The European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) in the European Parliament has abstained in today's vote on the new European Commission, saying that it cannot offer the same confidence in the new college as a whole as it has in President Barroso.


Following the vote, ECR Chairman, Mr. Michal Kaminski MEP said:

"The 'take it or leave it' nature of the confirmation vote has meant that we must assess the college as a whole. This is lamentable because there were strong candidates who we would have endorsed, and weak candidates who we would have opposed.

"In today's vote we have signalled our support for President Barroso, expressed our concerns about the competence of some of the new commissioners, and conveyed our criticism of the confirmation procedure."

Mr. Timothy Kirkhope MEP, ECR Deputy Chairman, said:

"Having been instrumental in President Barroso's re-election we still have total confidence in him. However, we do not yet have full confidence in his entire team.

"During the hearings, some of the candidates veered away from the Political Guidelines that President Barroso himself set out for his commission's second term. We will work with President Barroso to deliver those aspects of his agenda on which we can agree, but in some cases we were concerned that members of the commission were planning to pursue their own political agendas, even before they were sworn into office."

ECR Vice-President Mr. Jan Zahradil MEP said:

"Some national governments are culpable of not sending the best person for the job, instead opting for political expediency.

"However, now that the commission has been adopted, we do not intend to go into detail regarding those candidates that caused concern. Instead, we will look ahead to a constructive relationship with the new commission in order to deliver our programme of reform for the EU."

Mr. Derk Jan Eppink MEP, who sat through twelve commissioner hearings, said:

"We intend to campaign for reform of the commissioner confirmation procedure. It is imperative that next time the parliament can assess each candidate individually on his or her merits so that national governments think twice about who they send."