MEPs will likely reject an EU-US agreement regulating the access of EU financial data (SWIFT), in an upcoming July vote in the European Parliament.
If confirmed, the vote will represent the second time that MEPs have put their foot down over an agreement they say would dilute EU laws on fundamental rights and data protection.
The EU's commissioner for home affairs, Cecila Malmström, today disappointed MEPs with the presentation of a revised version of the agreement to share the financial data of suspected terrorists, after the European Parliament had overwhelmingly rejected it in a February vote.
"The European Commission seems to believe it is finished with its negotiations but in substance the text is very hard for MEPs to accept," Green MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht told EurActiv.
Although the vote is a few weeks away, Albrecht said the mood in the Parliament's civil liberties committee (LIBE), which received the commissioner's presentation today, was one of disappointment and pointed towards a likely rejection of the agreement.
Albrecht also admitted that a parliamentary 'no' to the agreement in July would spell disaster for transatlantic relations.
Nevertheless, MEPs' principal concerns have not been addressed, he says.
The agreement still allows the US authorities to request swathes of data – bulk data – which has not been processed by a European judicial authority first, a condition MEPs have been campaigning for.
The text gives the EU's policing authority, Europol, the role of checking the data before it is transferred, but MEPs argue that the body is not a judicial authority, unlike the EU's Eurojust, whose staff would have the legal expertise to deal with sensitive data transfers.
To appeal the transfer of their data, EU citizens would also be asked to file a court case on US soil under the US Freedom of Information Act, a law MEPs say is a watered-down version of its EU equivalent.
In addition, MEPs want the agreement to include a sunset clause which would mean the accord would effectively terminate after a designated period of time.
Malmström allegedly told MEPs that she could not include major changes to satisfy their demands, but MEPs plan to pile pressure on the EU executive to change the agreement.
Row in the making on Passenger Name Records
The dispute is only one part of MEPs' discontents, as concurrent negotiations on sharing European citizens' passenger name records (PNR), including payment data and addresses, has also angered a large majority of parliamentarians.
MEPs are closely following a Belgian case whereby the Air France flight of an adviser to the European Parliament destined for Mexico in September 2009 was redirected because the crew discovered the passenger was on a US "no-fly" list.
US authorities and Janet Napolitano, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, refused to tell Paul-Emile Dupret why he had been put on a "no-fly" list but he suspects it may come from an earlier apprehension by airport security in Miami on the way back from a parliamentary mission in Nicaragua.
The US authorities questioned Dupret about several articles he had written about South American politics, even asking him if he had links to Venezuelan left-wing leader Hugo Chavez.
Dupret's case is now part of an appeal process at the Belgian constitutional court, where he is being represented by a lawyer from the Human Rights League, an NGO.
