Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-01-20-Speech-3-164"
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"en.20100120.14.3-164"2
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"Mr President, this is a Council statement on a programme which is an agreement between the European Union and the United States, as you know, for tracking the financing of terrorism and, therefore, with the aim of exchanging and passing on financial data, which I believe everyone agrees upon. This agreement has been in place for the last few months. It has worked well and gives continuity to the flow of information destined for the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme.
This agreement formally expires on 31 January. Therefore, during the previous term of the Swedish Presidency, the Council thought about the need to sign an agreement to enable the continuation of that Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme. For this reason, on 30 November 2009, the Council adopted a Decision on the signing of that agreement, the TFTP (Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme).
It is a provisional agreement. It is therefore valid for a short period, which, in principal, expires on 31 October 2010. Therefore, the provisional agreement which, as I have said, the Council agreed last year, will in any case will become invalid, unless this European Parliament takes a prior decision, in 2010.
This is the present situation. There has been no communication between then and now on the part of the Commission about the content of that agreement, which is still not known by the European Parliament, but I can tell you now that it will be produced in the next week, on 25 January. It will be known to the European Parliament on 25 January. That agreement will arrive in this Chamber, properly translated and will be passed on in order for it to obtain the approval of the European Parliament.
This has not been done before for the following reason, given to us by the Commission: the Commission has not finished the relevant translations and, therefore, the Council has not received them from the Commission. As I have just told you, these different language versions are still being finished, and as you know, the Council can only pass that document, that agreement, to Parliament, when the different language versions are available, which the Commission has in hand. This is what will be produced on 25 January.
Furthermore, for the future and with a view to an agreement, not provisional, but definitive, the Commission intends to make recommendations in that regard for the formation of a long-term agreement, not an agreement which finishes in October of next year, such as the one we are talking about, but one for the long term. This long-term agreement must be negotiated and entered into according to new legal bases, as provided for by the Treaty of Lisbon, in which the European Parliament has full involvement. The European Parliament already has full involvement in those agreements, and that is how it will be for the forthcoming agreement, upon which the Commission has not yet made any recommendations.
To finish, I want to say that this is a matter of extreme importance. This is a procedure, a programme to combat terrorism. The Detroit incident has shown that there is present danger, that the threat persists and, therefore, the Member States must not allow that continuing flow of financial data to the TFTP to be abandoned. Judge Bruguière explained this in his
intervention filmed before this Parliament in November. He said that, in his opinion, several Member States had been able to benefit and take advantage of the information which was provided to the United States to uncover and avoid terrorist activities.
This led the Council, during the previous Swedish Presidency, to make a provisional application for a new agreement, to avoid the expiry of the current one on 31 January and, therefore, the cancellation of any possible flow of information. It was the only option that the Council had to do so and, of course, yes, Parliament’s position on obtaining information is understandable. This has not been produced, as I have told you, due to the European Commission’s delay in producing the relevant translations."@en1
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