Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-09-16-Speech-3-051"
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"en.20090916.5.3-051"2
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"−
Mr President, honourable Members, I would firstly like sincerely to thank Mrs Ask for giving us a summary of all the developments concerning SWIFT and of the negotiations under way with the United States on the continuation of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme, the TFTP.
I myself had the opportunity, during the meeting of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs on 22 July, to explain the workings of the TFTP and why we need an interim solution to prevent its interruption. The joint meeting of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs on 3 September took place with the Swedish Presidency, the Director-General of the Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security, Mr Faull, and Mr Bruguière in attendance. I believe that this meeting allowed a number of still open issues to be clarified.
I would like briefly to underline some aspects. The added value of the evaluation, by the US Treasury, of data within the context of the TFTP has been confirmed by Mr Bruguière’s report, which the members of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs were able to examine at the joint meeting at the beginning of September. As the Presidency has also reminded us, this analysis of the data has enabled the US authorities to prevent attacks and to facilitate investigations concerning terrorist attacks, both in the United States and in Europe.
Moreover, Judge Bruguière’s report confirmed that the US authorities had honoured the commitments they made in 2007 regarding data protection, namely – as Mrs Ask explained very well just now – to limit data preservation and to limit access to the data, so that they are used only where terrorist financing is suspected. In short, Mr Bruguière said that the commitments have been honoured.
It is clear, however, that the judicial framework negotiated in 2007 will no longer be operational since the data will no longer be located in the United States, after the change in the architecture of SWIFT, scheduled for the end of the year. An interim international agreement between the European Union and the United States is needed so that the US authorities can continue to analyse data concerning inter-European transactions taking place in the Netherlands.
The inclusion in this agreement of all the guarantees necessary to safeguard the fundamental rights of our citizens, notably that of the protection of personal data, is absolutely imperative. Of course, we support the Presidency wholeheartedly in its efforts to that end.
Moving on, I would like, above all, to say to the House, Mr President, that, as the Minister has just mentioned, we are talking about an interim agreement, the duration of which cannot exceed a maximum of 12 months. This means that it can be renegotiated immediately once the Treaty of Lisbon has entered into force, with the full involvement of the European Parliament. I can genuinely assure you, here, that the Commission will, of course, continue to keep Parliament constantly informed of the progress of this matter.
I would add that we are pleased to be able to prepare this agreement, which will be a permanent agreement, a long-term agreement, by demanding, of course, full reciprocity from our US partners. The fight against terrorism concerns us, too, and there is no reason why there should not be full and complete reciprocity. That is why I believe the involvement of Parliament in this negotiation of a future long-term agreement will be beneficial.
That is what I believe in all honesty. I would once more like to thank the Swedish Presidency and Mrs Ask for giving us a thorough overview of the situation, which has today given rise to this, once again, interim agreement."@en1
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