Brussels, 04/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - Several MEPs on the European Parliament (EP) civil liberties committee were critical on Monday 3 October of the Commission communication of 13 July on possible options for a European terrorism finance tracking system, TFTS, under the TFTP-SWIFT agreement the EU has with the United States.
ALDE Group MEPs Alexander Alvaro (the rapporteur) and Sophie In't Veld were unhappy that the Commission communication was not in line with what the EP had called for in 2010 in its vote approving the SWIFT programme. They felt the Commission had gone too far in its proposals.
While all the groups agree that the EU should have its own system, Alvaro said, and agree that it is not good to transfer European data to the United States or any other third country, the EP had never, he said, spoken of a comprehensive EU “programme” for tracking funding but a single European data mining system. Greens/EFA Group MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht said that the EP had clearly stated last year that “it did not want a system like the one that applies with the United States, nor that it should relate to a whole array of data”.
So far, the Commission has merely presented three possible frameworks for putting in place an EU programme to track terrorist financing, which involves monitoring banking operations carried out in Europe: a Community system, one that is purely national, or something in-between. The Commission asks the questions of how many data need be involved, the number of establishments that will have to be involved and the legitimacy of a European SWIFT system. It will bring forward a legislative proposal following its consultations, normally in 2012. (SP/transl.rt)