Brussels, 07/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - The ALDE Group at the European Parliament provided a heated response in a press release on Saturday 5 March to the results of a report published by the Joint Supervisory Body (JSB) on Europol. This report focuses on implementation of the new TFTP/Swift agreement between the EU and the US on the transfer of banking data in the context of fighting terrorism. According to ALDE, this report demonstrates that European data protection standards are not being respected. They say that the report indicates that Europol simply ratifies the demands addressed to it by the US authorities on “bulk” transfers of data but does not exercise any kind of supervision or control at all. ALDE explains that transfer authorisations appear to be granted “on an oral basis” and all relevant documents are classified “top secret”.
This criticism was confirmed by the JSB report assessing the requests made orally by the US Treasury. This practice does not allow the transfer process to be verified, in compliance with the TFTP agreement, more precisely Article 4 of this agreement on data protection. The JSB states that this shortcoming should be rectified, which is particularly due to Europol not having much time to respond to US requests. In its recommendations, the JSB therefore calls on Europol to urge the US Treasury to guarantee more detailed transfer demands. The JSB also wants assurances that checks carried out by Europol are done so on the basis of written demands.
Alexander Alvaro (Germany) considers that the Commission should take into account the shortcomings highlighted in this report in the perspective of providing its own assessment of the TFTP agreement planned for 17 March. The European Data Protection Supervisor should also provide it with a report on the TFTP. Sophia In't Veld (Netherlands) states that this report should encourage the Commission to sound the alarm because Europol has not respected data protection safeguards, despite this being one of the conditions for allowing this agreement to become operational. In't Veld points out that EP support for the current and future agreements between the EU and its partners, such as the PNR agreements, is conditional upon these partners' reliability. In this case, however, the report by the JSB “does not inspire much confidence”, she explained. (S.P./transl.fl)