Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-04-21-Speech-3-090"
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"en.20100421.5.3-090"2
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"Mr President, Mrs Malmström, ladies and gentlemen, last month, on 24 March, the Commission adopted a recommendation to the Council to authorise the opening of negotiations between the European Union and the United States for an agreement whereby finance messaging data are made available to the US Treasury Department in order to fight and prevent terrorism and its financing.
Parliament rightly considers that it, too, must be involved in this agreement, and we therefore agree that it should be provided with adequate information and that the Commission, as the negotiator of this agreement, should pass on that information at each stage in the negotiations.
The Council also understands that Parliament should have easier access to the classified parts of international agreements so that it can carry out its assessment in cases where it has a right of approval. Moreover, I must mention that in its statement of 9 February 2010, the Council promised to negotiate an interinstitutional agreement with Parliament on this topic. On behalf of the Council, I am pleased to confirm that promise today.
The recommendation was immediately submitted to the rapporteur and certain Members of the European Parliament and forwarded to the Council of the Union.
The Council of the Union remains convinced of the need for an agreement like this one and therefore fully supports the Commission’s recommendation to negotiate an agreement on the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme. The Commissioner’s draft mandate has been closely studied within Coreper and, in principle, this Commission recommendation will be put to the vote at the next Council meeting and we will vote in favour of it, taking into account Parliament’s position, of course, and the opinions that will be voiced on the subject here in this Chamber today.
The Council agrees with Parliament that the future agreement, known as the SWIFT agreement, must include adequate guarantees and safeguards. It agrees, therefore, with the feeling shown by Parliament that it is essential in all cases to comply with the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights, specifically Article 8 thereof, the Treaty of Lisbon and the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, there are fundamental principles that must be respected when personal data are transferred, such as the right of the person whose data are being processed to be informed, or the right to amend or delete such data if they are incorrect.
All rights relating to data protection must be guaranteed without discrimination; in other words, citizens of the European Union must be treated in the same way as citizens of the United States.
We believe there can be an agreement on the duration of the agreement to be signed with the United States, which I hope will be approximately five years.
As for exchanging data with third countries, our understanding is that, when the US authorities have grounds to think that there are data that may help authorities in other countries to prosecute terrorist crimes, such data should be used. That, moreover, is precisely what European legislation permits. According to European legislation, under similar circumstances where a Member State has obtained information from other Member States, that information may be transferred to third states for the purpose of fighting terrorism.
Then there is the subject of data transfers in bulk and not in all cases tied to a specific assumption, which is something that has to be kept for technical reasons and also for reasons of effectiveness, since it is often important to have a certain volume of data from which to draw conclusions when prosecuting terrorism. Such data transfers must, of course, be as specific and as restricted as possible and there must always be a very clear objective: the prosecution of certain terrorist crimes, which is the objective that justifies the existence of this kind of agreement.
As a result, we have a detailed draft mandate from the Commission. I believe it is a good draft, one that safeguards people’s fundamental rights, takes account of the effectiveness of these agreements, is based on reciprocity, is based on proportionality in the collection of data. It is certainly based on the oversight of the results of the effectiveness of these agreements – as also alluded to in the Commission’s recommendation – not least by Parliament, which is absolutely associated with the whole of these negotiations."@en1
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