Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-31-Speech-3-116"
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, honourable Members, we now turn from such fundamentally demanding issues as energy and climate change to discuss another very important matter that has, in the past, demanded your attention here in the European Parliament, and also that of the European Union as a whole not merely on one occasion but repeatedly, and the issue to which I refer is that of the sharing of airline passengers’ personal data.
In December 2006, the Council informed the Members that the questions they had raised demanded careful examination; the Council is still engaged in doing this, and its inquiries have not yet been completed. In the remainder of this speech, I shall be endeavouring, on behalf of the Council, to answer the various questions put to me by Members of your House, although all the matters to which I can refer are still subject to the Council’s inquiries.
In a speech in July 2006, the Finnish minister for European affairs, as the then President-in-Office of the Council, announced to the plenary that the Council was not at that time able to confirm press reports of an exchange of information between SWIFT and the American authorities. She reminded your House that finding out what had actually happened was a matter for the national authorities, and went on to state that the European Union was then, and would in future be, prepared to act if it turned out that events made legislation at the European level necessary.
As I have already mentioned, the Council and the Commission are currently still engaged in examining every aspect and every issue of potential relevance to this dossier, while also taking the outcomes from the data protection group into consideration. The Presidency is giving thought to how the work on this at Council level might be organised, and will, in so doing, take account of what emerges from the current investigations, but what I can tell you is that no new group has as yet been appointed with this purpose in mind.
Since investigations are still ongoing, the Council is at present unable to answer the question as to whether these matters will impact Regulation 1781 of 15 November 2006 on the information on the payer accompanying transfers of funds. The Council has no knowledge of whether or not the Commission is considering submitting any proposal for the amendment of this Regulation, but I am sure that we will learn that when the Commission makes its statement.
Under the Treaty, it is the Commission’s function to monitor the implementation of Community law in the Member States and to take appropriate action as and when a Member State fails to discharge its obligations under EC law.
Reference has also been made to the ‘automated targeting system’, an American system affecting the transport of freight and persons within the United States and from and into them. Whether data obtained from SWIFT have been fed into this system is one of the questions currently being examined.
When it stated that an international framework for combating terrorism was already in place, the data protection group was referring to the working party on fighting money laundering and the funding of terrorism and the recommendations made by it. The Council believes that good work is being done within this framework, although it has to be said that this group’s recommendations are addressed to banks and financial institutions.
While I am on this subject, I would like to stress – speaking on the Council’s behalf – that SWIFT cannot be regarded as a financial institution for this working party’s purposes and that the Financial Action Task Force framework is therefore not directly applicable, except possibly to certain specific aspects. That concludes the Presidency’s statement on behalf of the Council.
As we all know, following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the United States enacted legislation according to which airlines running flights into and out of the United States must permit the US authorities electronic access to the data in their automatic reservation and processing systems, the material known as ‘passenger name records’, and, should the airlines decline to comply, they are threatened with the withdrawal of their landing rights.
I would now like to briefly remind the House of the state of play. In May 2006, the European Court of Justice had, in response to an appeal by your House, declared null and void the Council decision on the agreement between the European Community and the USA relating to the forwarding of passenger data to the US authorities and, likewise, the Commission’s decision on the appropriateness of the data protection measures.
The ECJ’s fundamental justification for its decision was the European Community’s lack of power to conclude any such agreement, since it was not within the sphere of the first pillar. It had nothing to say about the material question of whether the data was sufficiently protected.
As you will be aware, negotiations with the USA on a successor agreement proved to be highly problematic, but it was nevertheless eventually possible to conclude them with an interim agreement due to expire on 3 July this year, which is on the basis of the third pillar and of the USA’s undertaking given in respect of data protection, which had already been taken as a basis to the earlier agreement between the European Community and the United States.
At the beginning of January 2007, the Commission made a recommendation to the Council to the effect that it should approve the commencement of negotiations with the USA on a new passenger data agreement that should replace the present interim one. The EU’s negotiating mandate for the Council Presidency, which the Commission endorses, was today discussed by COREPER, and the prospect is that the Council will adopt a resolution on the subject and lay down negotiating guidelines in February.
It is likely that the negotiations on a new passenger name record agreement will prove to be extremely difficult, since there is no evidence of any interest on the part of the United States in improving data protection. Indeed, it seems far more likely that they will claim that their undertaking in respect of data protection no longer applies. The conclusion of an agreement is, however, essential in terms of the standard of data protection that is to be guaranteed and in the interests of the European Union, for, in the absence of an agreement, the airlines would be under great pressure to pass on the passenger data in order not to risk losing their right to land in the USA.
The German Presidency of the Council will, with the Commission’s support, be pressing for a legally watertight arrangement that secures the protection of data, taking the interests of the passengers and of the airlines into account and maintaining a high level of security, and I would like to stress that it is, in this, taking due account of the positions of your House as expressed in the relevant resolutions of September last year on data protection, on the combating of terrorism, and also on the defence of human rights.
This subject also brings me to speak in response to the oral questions put to me by Mrs Berès and Mr Cavada on the subject of SWIFT. The Council wishes to thank them for their interest in this dossier, in relation to which it has already had the opportunity to answer questions from your House’s Members on various occasions. As regards my answers to these questions, I would refer the honourable Members to my statement."@en1
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