Brussels, 23/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - The US mission in Brussels announced on 22 November that US and EU justice and home affairs representatives met on 21 November in Washington during their biennial ministerial meeting, a few days before the US-EU summit, which will be tackling the same subjects. A series of key subjects will be discussed such as terrorism, the new agreement on the transfer of passenger name records (PNR), cyber security, explosives and the future framework agreement on data protection. Commissioner Viviane Reding will be leading the EU delegation in these talks..
In a press release, US Secretary of State for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano emphasised the US' strong commitment to working with its European counterparts in tackling threats to their “common security”, as well as their “economic stability”. The justice minister, Eric Holder, indicated the determination of both parties to “continue to strengthen our efforts to combat organised crime and explore strategies for identifying and preventing terrorist activities”. The minister said that the US also reaffirmed its commitment to the increased sharing of information with European legal and law enforcement authorities, whilst “protecting personal data confidentiality”.
On 9 November, the EU and the US reached a new agreement on the transfer of PNR, which is expected to replace the agreement that has been in force since 2007. The European Commission considers that it has managed to obtain concessions from the Americans on a certain number of aspects, such as the period for retaining data, the definition of crimes covered and making data anonymous following a period of six months. On the question of Europeans having the right to appeal, matters did not, however, shift due to the fact that appropriate law in the US, the Privacy Act, does not apply to Europeans.
In the future comprehensive agreement on data protection Reding would, however, like to make some progress in this direction but the US has not appeared very enthusiastic with regard to agreements that would allow a data protection limit to be set for all future sectoral agreements that are similar to PNR or the agreement on TFTP/Swift. During the Washington meeting Holder nevertheless asserted his determination to continue working on this overall agreement and affirmed that personal data protection was just as important for the US as it was for the EU. (SP/transl.fl)