EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT REJECTS SWIFT DEAL FOR SHARING BANK DATA WITH US

12.02.2010 [13:07]
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Baku, February 12 (AZERTAC). The European Parliament has voted against a deal that would have led the EU and US to share bank transfer data, something Washington has said is crucial for counter-terrorism investigations, Deutsche Welle reports.

The European Parliament voted to reject a bank data sharing deal with the United States on Thursday. The parliamentarians resisted appeals from Washington to continue a nine-month interim agreement allowing US authorities to monitor Europeans` financial transaction data from SWIFT, an international banking transfer system.

The US says the data-sharing is for investigations into terrorist activity, but many European politicians expressed concern that it failed to protect the privacy of EU citizens.

"The majority view is that the correct balance between security, on the one hand, and the protection of civil liberties and fundamental rights, on the other, has not been achieved," European Parliament head, Jerzy Buzek, said in a statement after the vote.

The United States expressed its regret after the vote, calling it a "setback for EU-US counter-terror cooperation."

"This decision disrupts an important counter-terrorism program, which has resulted in more than 1,500 reports and numerous leads to European governmental authorities and has contributed significantly to collaborative counter-terrorism efforts between the United States and Europe," the US mission in Brussels said in a statement.

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT REJECTS SWIFT DEAL FOR SHARING BANK DATA WITH US

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