Tag Archives: SWIFT

European Parliament Rejects the SWIFT Agreement

On February 11, 2010, the plenary of the European Parliament rejected by a vote of 378 to 196 the agreement reached in 2009 between the EU and the U.S. to allow access by U.S. law enforcement authorities to the payment database of the financial consortium SWIFT.  The agreement had been negotiated between the EU Council of Ministers and the European Commission with the U.S. government to allow continued access to the database, a mirror copy of which had been moved by SWIFT from the U.S. to Europe.  With the Lisbon Treaty’s entry into force, the Parliament gained new powers to approve measures affecting law enforcement and civil liberties, and a number of members of the Parliament have expressed concern regarding the level of data protection provided for in the agreement.  According to news reports, several top U.S. government officials (including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) had been lobbying the European Parliament to approve the agreement, on the grounds that it was essential to fight terrorism in both the U.S. and Europe.

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European Union Agrees to Access by U.S. Anti-Terrorism Authorities to Personal Data in Europe

On November 30, the Council of the European Union agreed to allow U.S. anti-terrorism authorities access to financial data of individuals located in the EU under certain circumstances. Under the agreement, U.S. authorities will continue to have access to data collected by Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication ("SWIFT") after a SWIFT database located in Switzerland becomes active later this year (the data had previously been processed in a database located in the U.S.). The agreement contains restrictions on access to the data that have been negotiated between the EU and the U.S. (e.g., access will be limited to data that relate to individuals with links to terrorist activities; U.S. authorities will not have access to data concerning intra-European transactions; and U.S. authorities seeking access to personal data will have to tailor their requests narrowly and justify their requests to the U.S. Department of the Treasury). The agreement will run until October 31, 2010, after which time a further agreement between the U.S. and the EU would have to be negotiated for the U.S. authorities to continue to have access to the data. The agreement was reached despite the abstention from voting of the governments of Austria, Germany, Greece and Hungary because of data protection concerns. Under the EU’s new Lisbon Treaty (which went into effect on December 1, 2009), any further agreement will require participation by the European Parliament, which has been highly critical of the agreement.

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