After a week of intense lobbying, national governments were last night nearing a compromise with members of the European Parliament over how the EU should negotiate a future pact on sharing banking data with the US for counter-terrorism purposes.

The Parliament is scheduled to vote today (11 February) on what some MEPs regard as a precedent-setting exercise of its new powers under the Lisbon treaty to approve or reject accords that the EU signs with other countries.

The Parliament has been at loggerheads with national governments since December over a temporary pact on data-sharing that would allow US Treasury officials to continue to scrutinise thousands of records of bank transfers made by Europeans through SWIFT, an international bank transfer consortium.

The pact would formalise secretive arrangements that the US Treasury has had with SWIFT since 2001. In the meantime, the EU and US would negotiate a pact for the longer term.

Across party lines, MEPs want to use the issue to champion their newly acquired powers in defence of citizens’ rights to privacy and data protection, said Claude Moraes, a UK Labour MEP, who sits on the Parliament’s civil liberties committee.

“There is a sense of precedent-setting,” Moraes said. “This is a testing ground. We are taking our powers seriously. The Parliament has really become responsible in anti-terrorism measures.”

The decision by the Parliament’s civil liberties committee last week to recommend that MEPs reject the temporary EU-US deal opened a rift with national governments.

‘Dangerous game’

National officials have accused MEPs of playing a dangerous game and have warned that a decade’s work of developing closer security ties with the US is at stake.

Cecilia Malmström, the European commissioner for home affairs, has warned MEPs that, if they reject the deal, the US might seek access to SWIFT records through bilateral agreements without the same safeguards.

The interim nine-month data-sharing pact took effect on 1 February, but would become void if MEPs voted against it.

Jeannine Hennis-Plasschaert, a Dutch Liberal MEP who was involved in talks with national governments and officials on the fate of the interim accord, said that MEPs were “willing to explore a conditional postponement” of Thursday’s vote.

A postponement would allow MEPs a face-saving way out of a worsening stand-off with both national governments and the US administration, over what the EU and US claim is a necessary tool to prevent terrorist groups from moving funds across the world.

Hennis-Plasschaert added, however, that the current offer from the governments and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso was still too vague on how they would address the Parliament’s problems with the accord.

National governments and the Commission have promised MEPs greater powers of review to save the data-sharing deal.

They have also offered the MEPs the opportunity to look at confidential documentation during negotiations about a permanent agreement, provided that they pass the temporary legislation.

Hennis-Plasschaert noted the Parliament wanted specific commitments from EU and US officials on guarantees to secure basic data-protection rights, to avoid abusive use of the personal data, and to give EU citizens a right to fight possible misuse of their data in US courts.

MEPs also want more time to scrutinise the stop-gap agreement, by getting more access to confidential and intelligence reports on how the data-mining measure has worked to date.

Possible postponement

The Parliament’s largest group, the centre-right European People’s Party, has called for a postponement of Thursday’s vote. The suggestion is also being considered by the centre-left Socialists and Democrats group and the Liberal (ALDE) group.

Postponement would give MEPs more time to assess the interim measure and to agree with national governments and the Commission a new negotiating mandate for talks with the US on the permanent data-sharing deal.

As European Voice went to press, last-minute talks between the Spanish government, which holds the presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Commission and MEPs, were being arranged to sort out the specifics of the Parliament’s demands.

Officials from the Spanish presidency of the EU were optimistic that a deal could be found to postpone the vote.

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