International

In September the European Parliament begins a series of hearings on the American eavesdropping programme PRISM, about which so much remains to be done. The strong reaction is quite correct, because the US practices are in contradiction of a range of agreements. We should not be naïve, however. European intelligence services collect massive amounts of data without our knowledge, cooperating within Europe, moreover, extremely closely, about which we also know precious little. So it’s not only time for measures to be taken to counter the Americans’ practices, but also for a thorough enquiry into the working methods of European intelligence services.

How stupid we in Europe must look! For years we’ve been negotiating a range of treaties with the US giving access to private data. The European Parliament was recently insistent in blocking a measure giving such access routinely to bank data as bulk material to the Americans, demanding in the strongest terms that US privacy legislation be tightened up. All the time the American secret services were laughing up their sleeves, because after all they were already grabbing all of this kind of data illegally. This week it was decided to decouple the negotiations on the free trade agreement with the US from the PRISM affair. This is strange, because what trust can you have in a negotiating partner that disregards all these other treaties? Apart from all the objections which I have to the proposed free trade agreement, it’s utterly stupid of the European Union to give up its most valuable means of exerting pressure, the suspension of talks, at the very start of the process.

The real reason why the EU is making such a poor show of this is probably that it hasn’t got much of a leg to stand on. The US has a vast amount of data on the practices of the British, French, German and for example also the Dutch intelligence services, and if these indeed employ the same methods, and in doing so transgress all sorts of international agreements, negotiations could be awkward.

We are probably going to nominate Edward Snowden for the European Parliament’s annual human rights. It was this whistle-blower who blew the lid on the entire scandal when he began making his revelations. Recognition of his role and protecting him from prosecution are important, and it’s more important still that the European Parliament show its teeth. No stone must be left unturned in an investigation of not only US but also European intelligence services. If we don’t succeed in this, we won’t be able any longer to bleat about the EU’s ‘fundamental values’. It will be clear that no such values exist.