International

Last week the European Parliament Civil Liberties Committee voted against the provisional agreement with the US for the handover of bank data in the framework of the fight against terrorism. Next week in Strasbourg the definitive vote will probably take place, and it is not out of the question that at the last moment agreement will be reached with the Spanish Presidency. For the SP it is debatable whether in the interests of security data can be exchanged, under strict conditions, with other countries, but in this case these conditions have not been fulfilled and, moreover, parliaments have, as far as could be achieved, been pushed to one side. And so, for these reasons, we will next week again vote against.

Most people who want to transfer money to another country use the SWIFT-code. If you do so, you can be sure that the transfer will be registered centrally by an organisation, based in Belgium, and known as SWIFT. The Americans are extremely interested in these data, because they can reveal when international financial transactions are being conducted by terrorists or terrorist organisations. Now there is nothing wrong, if you have specific suspicions in relation to persons or organisations, in asking for their financial data. According to the agreement which the Ministers of Justice of the EU member states have concluded with the US, however, far more data must be produced than simply those of suspect persons or organisations. The US can in one fell blow receive 25% of all existing data. In addition, the US has made only certain oral promises regarding respect for the right to privacy, while guarantees built into the agreement are totally insufficient.

The Ministers of Justice also admit the deficiencies in the agreement as it stands, but emphasise that we are talking only about a provisional accord. Later in the year negotiations can begin which include the question of privacy guarantees. Probably under great pressure from the US, Dutch Justice minister Hirsch Ballin and his colleagues have nevertheless, despite all its deficiencies, pushed through the provisional agreement with enormous haste. In the Netherlands the Senate was simply bypassed, while ministers tried also to evade the European Parliament's right of assent.

Nobody has been able to tell me or my colleagues what gaps in security will be created if the provisional accord cannot be implemented. In cases where there is definite suspicion, the Americans can in any case ask the Netherlands and other EU member states for data, and they will receive them. It's just that they cannot, all at once, ask for almost everyone's data in order to sift out interesting information. This seems to me not only to be no problem, its opposite would be undesirable. And so next week we will try to torpedo the accord, in the interest of democracy and in the interest of a meticulous policy which puts our security first but does not limit our rights any more than is necessary.