EU Parliament split over electronic data protection[fr][de] 

In its final vote this week on the parts of the Telecoms package that fall under its authority, Parliament's Internal Market Committee (IMCO) was supposed to include an opinion issued last June by the Civil Rights Committee (LIBE).

The work of the two bodies on these issues is indeed linked under the "enhanced cooperation" procedure, which applies when a subject touches upon the spheres of competence of different parliamentary committees.

But, despite a common practice of automatically including the contributions of associated committees in the final text, this time some members of the IMCO Committee declared they might be unable to accept the amendments presented by the LIBE Committee.

Behind this unusual rejection lies the LIBE Committee's intention to allow the processing of electronic traffic data by "any natural or legal person", without the consent of the user, if it is necessary for security purposes. Socialist and Green MEPs belonging to the IMCO Committee are not at ease with this wording.

Traffic data include several pieces of information which are considered private by many, particularly IP addresses (the first source of identity in the online world) and information relating to the duration, timing, volume and origins of an electronic communication.

Yet the LIBE Committee argues that electronic service providers need to process traffic data "to preserve and enhance the security of their services and the network". It says the security of bank transactions or personal health records transmissions could be hampered without more clarification and better consistency of this procedure in EU data protection rules.

The IMCO Committee might not share this position and is therefore expected to request that the plenary vote on the Telecoms package be postponed, currently foreseen for the first week of September.

Civil liberty group 'Squaring the Net' says the LIBE Committee amendment represents "a major breach for the protection the protection of personal data and privacy, as it allows businesses to remotely control users' electronic communications without their consent". It adds that such a measure "paves the way for the deployment of intrusive technologies on the client".  

A spokesperson for the IMCO Committee said that "some MEPs are not certain to accept in the plenary vote the amendments proposed by the LIBE Committee", underlining that there could be problems and that there might be a need "for more time".

Green German MEP Heide Rühle commented : "Unfortunately the Internal Market Committee could not address the ill-conceived Civil Liberties Committee vote in June that supported allowing any natural or legal person to process traffic data."