Draft EU-US SWIFT agreement published

Green MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht has published the draft EU-US SWIFT agreement formally sent to EU parliamentarians today.

According to Albrecht, the agreement still contains many issues already criticised in the last version rejected by MEPs earlier this year, e.g. the transmission of data packages containing data of innocent EU citizens.

This sounds like the Commission didn't really listen to the European Parliament - Malmström seems to love the conflict.

Biden in the European Parliament: All quiet on the Western front

Joe Biden gave a 30 minutes speech in the European Parliament today.

Most of it was charming Brussels, Europe and the European Parliament, mixed with statements supporting human rights, privacy, peace and individual freedoms. But all this was intertwined with the obligatory "triple axis" as @martiadroher put it: "Security, Security, and Security".

He underlined that he wants to use Passenger Name Record (PNR) data and financial transaction data (SWIFT) to fight terrorism. He supported this with the success US authorities had in capturing the alleged Time Square terrorist thanks to PNR data (and probably other intrusive measures that are used against citizens who are not terrorists every day).

And he defended the need to be in Afghanistan, totally in line with the CIA recommendations (published by Wikileaks) on how to get more public support from Europe for this war (e.g. focus on civilian and policing aspects). His final sentence ended with the words "... and may God protect all our troops" which shows that this was his actual focus, these were the words he wanted us to be remembered: Troops, troops, troops.

It is not some God who should protect "our" troops, it should be politicians protecting them by not sending them to fight, especially not to places where you are not providing actual help for more security or democracy (Afghanistan is not peaceful at all after 9 years and Karzai is definitely not a democrat) but costing our societies so much money that one can rightfully blame these expenses as part of the debt problem that many European countries and the US are facing today.

Well, Mr Biden, that was a nice speech, but I'm not convinced, not a bit, that you actually bring the change you are advocating...!

PS: A German MEP has a picture on how Biden's speech looked from the plenary.

Update: Conor has also written about Biden's speech. Erin has reacted to the content of Biden's speech.

EP says NO to SWIFT

The European Parliament has said "No!" to the SWIFT agreement between the EU and the USA, with 378 votes in favour and 196 votes against (plus 31 abstentions) the report by rapporteur Hennis (fresh photo from right after the vote) which recommended to reject the SWIFT agreement.

As far as I can recall, this is the first time since September 2001 that representatives who have been elected by us have made a bold and substantive statement that the fight against terror may not undermine the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens.

It is also the first bold expression of the "new" European Parliament. It is the strong claim that it now represents European citizens more than ever before and that neither the Commission nor the member states in the Council can continue their behind-closed-doors, bureaucratic-diplomatic games against the interests of us citizens.

It is a sign that the EU system might actually become more political and thus maybe a little more democratic in the future - if MEPs continue to play their role after SWIFT, too.

This is a great and historic day for Europe, and I thank MEPs and especially rapporteur Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert for her good work on this dossier!

PS.: The postponement of the vote as demanded by the European Peoples Party (EPP) group had been rejected just slightly with 290 against 305 votes (via @bueti on Twitter). That was close!

No support to SWIFT last week - 23 votes in favour yesterday?

Last week, the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs met already to discuss the SWIFT agreement that it rejected yesterday with 29 votes against 23.

In the Council report on last week's meeting it seems as if no MEP spoke in favour of the SWIFT agreement, although 23 of them voted in favour of SWIFT yesterday.

Is that because they didn't voice their agreement publicly? Or is that, because the Council secretariat only reported the ones that spoke against SWIFT for member states to know where to put more pressure?

None of the two option would be good, but judge for yourself reading through the following excerpts from the report (links added by me):

Mr Caamano Dominguez suggested that Europe should not show weakness on terrorism, inter alia by adopting the interim agreement on providing data for the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP).

The questions asked by representatives of political groups mostly revolved around the issue of the "Swift" Agreement on providing data for the TFTP. Mr Busuttil and Ms Vergiat (GUE/NGL, FR) were disappointed about the procedure chosen by the Council while Ms In 't Veld asked for access to an opinion by the Council Legal Service; Ms Vergiat and Mr Romeva i Rueda also raised concerns about the content of the agreement. [...]

In his replies, Mr Caamano Dominguez justified the need for an interim agreement, saying it was important not to lag behind in the fight against terrorism and suggested using the nine-month period for a careful analysis.

Also, many individual speakers made critical remarks about the "Swift" Agreement (inter alia Mr Voss (EPP, DE), Mr Albrecht (Greens/EFA, DE) and Mr de Jong (GUE/NGL, NL)). [...]

[...] Mr de Kerchove preferred to wait for the Commission report on body scanners before taking a position on them. He added that Judge Bruguière would issue a second evaluation report on the "Swift" Agreement the following week. On the latter point, Ms In 't Veld reacted by criticising its timing in the context of the request for the Parliament's consent and its provisional application.

Mr Faull, Director-General of the Commission's Justice, Liberties and Security Directorate- General, recalled that the Parliament had been requested to give its consent to the interim agreement on providing data for the use of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) ("Swift" Agreement). He added that the provisional application of the interim agreement was a separate matter, but would end if the Parliament refused its consent. In his view, the programme had produced important security leads and should therefore be continued. He announced a general review of the existing legislation as promised by Commissioner-designate Ms Malmström in her hearing and confirmed that Judge Bruguière would present his second evaluation report on the "Swift" arrangement in place at the LIBE meeting the following week.

The discussion focused on the "Swift" Agreement. Several speakers expressed critical views, in particular Mr Alvaro cited several points on which the agreement did not fulfil the criteria laid down in the Parliament's resolution of September 2009. Mr Lambrinidis (S&D, EL) joined Ms In 't Veld's critique of the timing of the new Bruguière report; Mr Tavares and Mr Albrecht expressed critical views about his first report. Mr Strasser (EPP, AT) and Mr Weber (EPP, DE) expressed doubts about the possible "security gap" invoked to justify the provisional application of the interim agreement, Mr Weber expressing concerns that the conclusion of an interim agreement would lower the chances of achieving improvements in a definitive agreement. Mr Busuttil considered that there was not enough information available to scrutinise the draft agreement, while Mr Kirkhope suggested accepting the provisional application and only giving an opinion after thorough reflection.

There you got it: Commission, Council Presidency, and Council anti-terror representative push in favour of SWIFT, and no supportive voices from MEPs - strange considering yesterday's vote, isn't it?

Hillary Clinton, thanks for letting our MEPs decide on their own!

It is an absolute impudence that Hillary Clinton calls Jerzy Buzek, the European Parliament president, (confirmed by him on Twitter*) to pressure on him to make MEPs reject the SWIFT agreement!

This follows direct pressure on MEPs by US diplomatic authorities in Brussels, but still couldn't stop the EP Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home affairs to agree today (result: 29 to 23) on a recommendation to withhold consent to the SWIFT agreement.

But the terror-crazy American authorities who want to desperately access our banking data, undermining privacy rights and data protection standards, will continue playing their fear stories until next week in order to force on the plenary to still agree to SWIFT, despite the negative recommendation by the committee and by the rapporteur.

I can only hope our MEPs will stand firm and follow the recommendation of both their rapporteur and their committee.

In the end, this is an absolute undue interference into the democratic affairs of a democratically elected body, and I urge the US to mind their own business before they pressure on our representatives in ways that go beyond the acceptable!

*Update (00:15): As Jon Worth noted on Twitter, the tweet in which Buzek confirmed he had spoken to Clinton was deleted for unknown reasons. Since Nambu, the programme that I use to read Twitter, doesn't erase tweets when they are erased on Twitter I could just do the following screen shot of the tweet that was sent out around 22h:

See also: Jon Worth's critical reaction to this post and my comment in which I disagree. And Europaeum who has another screen shot of the tweet.

Read also Basteiro who is now (Friday around noon) telling that the Buzek people deny the tweet has never existed although several people noticed it, and I saw it on Nambu as well as on the Twitter page to get the link you find at the beginning that now leads to an empty page.

"No to SWIFT" says European Parliament rapporteur Hennis-Plasschaert

In her report on the SWIFT agreement regarding the exchange of banking data between the USA and the EU, European Parliament rapporteur Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert has recommended to the EP to reject the SWIFT agreement in the vote tomorrow.

After long explanations on the historical backgrounds, legal concerns, privacy and data protection questions, as well as inter-institutional considerations, she concludes under "6. Recommendation FMDA and way forward":

"Based on the above-mentioned, your rapporteur would recommend Parliament to withhold its consent."

This report by the rapporteur is also a clear statement on that the fight against terror may not disproportionately limit our rights - and my impression over the last years was clearly that public authorities have been giving way to much weight to the first!

The arguments speak in her favour, and I thus hope that the European Parliament will reject the SWIFT deal tomorrow.

Null and void and SWIFT

Earlier this month, Jerzy Buzek, the President of the European Parliament wrote a letter (via Netzpolitik.org) to the Spanish Council Presidency regarding the SWIFT agreement between the USA and the EU (see background).

As you may have noticed, this affair has caused quite some controversy in the European Parliament these days.

So it is quite interesting to find this corrigendum of a Council document from today yesterday called

"Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America on the processing and transfer of Financial Messaging Data from the European Union to the United States for purposes of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program - Reply to the letters from the President of the European Parliament"

The title and the fact that it is addressed from the Spanish Council Presidency to the EU member states in COREPER makes it look like a draft reply to Buzek's letter.

But the text in the corrigendum filed under "5432/10 COR 1" is just:

Document 5432/10 shall be considered null and void.

In addition, the original document "5432/10" cannot be found in the Council documents archive.

What happened to the alleged draft reply - did the Spanish have to withdraw it due to pressure from the Parliament or from certain member states?