Brussels, 20/01/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 25 January, the EU will send the European Parliament the draft EU-US agreement on SWIFT, signed at the end of November 2009 under the Swedish Presidency: the agreement will replace the text that expires on 31 January. It did not prove possible to send it to the Parliament before, because the European Commission did not have all the different linguistic versions it was obliged to send. On Wednesday 20 January, Spanish Secretary of StateDiego López Garrido informed the European Parliament of this development, and added that the programme on the funding of terrorism had achieved good results. The Council representative declared that it is crucial to ensure the continuity of information flows on the funding of terrorism. He also highlighted the fact that this involved a “provisional and short-term agreement”, which expires on 31 October 2010. The European Commission intends to present proposals on a possible long-term agreement, which will be necessary to negotiate on the basis of the new legal situation resulting from the Lisbon Treaty. The latter provides the Parliament with its rightful role in this context (for the EP's position see EUROPE 9979). This is an “extremely important affair” stated Mr López Garrido: what happened in Detroit demonstrates that the terrorist threat has not gone away.
MEPs had already demonstrated their displeasure with the lack of information provided from the Council, which was not dissipated by the declaration by López Garrido, although all of them unanimously recognised the importance of the fight against terrorism. MEPs from across the political divide all hammered home the fact that this fight must be carried out in respect of citizens' rights. Manfred Weber (EPP) expressed Parliament's frustration with the procedures at the Council. The German MEP said that they had no time to waste. His compatriot Martin Schulz (S&D) raised the tone and said that Parliament should not be mocked because the agreement affected fundamental liberties of citizens and “they should not be trying to get us to swallow it by force and in fourth gear”.
“We therefore have a week to examine the agreement”, pointed out Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, Belgium), who explained that if Parliament were to agree, it would be subject to certain conditions to which they would like the answers before 25 January: - Parliament must have all the necessary information; the EP must be involved in the negotiations on the definitive agreement; the nine specific conditions from the Freedom committee at the European Parliament on the contents of the agreement have to be examined. On Thursday 21 January, the Conference of Presidents is meeting: the president of the ALDE Group asked whether they will be able to organise the competent committee and submit the text to the plenary.
“You must understand why we are annoyed”, exclaimed Rebecca Harms from the German Greens/EFA, who also affirmed that several versions were already available. She asked why Parliament had not been able to see them. She protested that they had almost breached the Lisbon Treaty and denounced the “kamikaze attitude” of the Council. Timothy Kirkhope (ECR, United Kingdom) said that he was reassured that application of the SWIFT programme was beyond reproach. This view was expressed after having talks with David Cohen, the deputy Secretary of State at the US Treasury, regarding the funding of terrorism but the former did criticise the “substandard” communication with the Council and the reasons invoked by the Commission for delay. Kirkhope added that “Parliament's consent must not be a retroactive tool”.
“You treated us in a humiliating way”, affirmed Rui Tavares from the GUE/NGL Group (Portugal), adding: “I'm not against the agreement but I almost want to reject it to make Ms Malmström and Ms Reding happy, who would have to draft a better one”. According to Martin Ehrenhauser (NI, Austria), a large number of measures in the programme are out of proportion with the threat of terrorism and unacceptably restrict the rights of citizens.
Confirming the goodwill of the Council, Mr Lopez Garrido affirmed that, “if I were a member of the European Parliament I would probably react like you” (and the fact that he did not know about the apparently available versions of the text). The Spanish Presidency representative said that “we will then have the time to calmly examine the definitive text and Parliament will be able to participate in the negotiations independently”. Will he send a letter of reply to questions from Mr Verhofstadt? The acting president of the Council concluded that when the documents are available they would be able to discuss them. (L.G./transl.fl)