Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-18-Speech-1-134"
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"en.20101018.15.1-134"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on many occasions over the last year, we have discussed various matters relating to data protection and the privacy of European citizens, and we have said that in order to ensure the physical safety of people who travel, for example, by aeroplane, we should protect the personal data of European citizens. This is an exchange that has both legal and political implications that Parliament should carefully consider.
We know that this is like building a house from the roof down: every time we have a problem, we try to solve that problem. First, we had Secure Widespread Identities for Federated Telecommunications (SWIFT), and now Passenger Name Record (PNR). Yet we are failing to build the house from the foundations upwards. In other words, we are not first determining what the general thinking in Europe is on data protection, and then applying it across the board to every matter and every international partner, whether it be the US today, or China, South Korea, or Saudi Arabia in the future: any of the international partners who request this type of data.
Obviously, while working in this fragmented and piecemeal way, we are already dealing with an extremely difficult framework, and Parliament has tried to make sense of this. We all know, however, that things should be quite different. If the situation is already bad, however, it is becoming even worse if reports are confirmed that certain Member States have been negotiating Memoranda of Understanding with the US which allow the direct transfer of data regarding passengers who are travelling from those Member States to the US.
I would like to make clear here that my main complaint is not with the US. The US is one of our international partners; it is a country that has many things to admire and with whom we have common interests. I am, however, complaining about the Member States that are breaking with the negotiations that we should be having at European level. This shows disloyalty on the part of those Member States, and it undermines not only the negotiations which are under way with the US, but also interinstitutional understanding within the EU itself. It also undermines the possibility that we might later reach an agreement with the US – a framework agreement on data protection, for which Mr Albrecht is the rapporteur.
This is also the kind of attitude that can have unpredictable effects, because if the US is now negotiating with individual Member States, what is to stop it from later exchanging citizens’ data with individual airlines, or even via a direct approach, dealing with them individually at the time of buying a ticket?
Someone has to stand up and defend the rights of the 500 million European citizens. Parliament has been doing it at this level. It is important that the Commission, the Member States and the US are aware that, in the case of PNR, Parliament has its finger on the button. Moreover, as it has already shown in the case of SWIFT, Parliament is not afraid to use its prerogatives, whether in order to interrupt an interim agreement or to reject a permanent agreement which does not meet the guarantees on data privacy and security concerning European citizens."@en1
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