Vilnius, 19/07/2013 (Agence Europe) - Will there be ministerial-level agreement on data protection in the very near future? Speaking in Vilnius on Friday 19 July, Commissioner for Fundamental Rights Viviane Reding expressed the belief that there would, encouraged by the official support given the same day by Germany and France to her proposed reform of the 1995 directive.
“I applaud this”, said Reding, extremely pleased to have Berlin and Paris on board, stating that a majority in favour of her text has now been reached. And whether or not the United Kingdom agrees, its support will not be necessary, she added. “The decision is taken by a majority and I can already see a large majority”, said the commissioner.
The French and German justice ministers, Christiane Taubira and Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, put forward a series of principles to be followed in order to protect the data of European citizens from the authorities of third countries, particularly from foreign surveillance programmes, in a joint contribution on Friday. The two ministers said that they were “greatly concerned by the recent revelations about the American surveillance programme PRISM”. They take the view that “access to personal data by foreign authorities has a significant impact on privacy, which requires a strict framework and close monitoring”. “On this issue, everybody should know what personal data are collected by the telecommunications operators, which of these data are transferred to foreign authorities and for what purposes”, the two ministers write.
Their contribution was warmly welcomed by Reding, whose proposals aim at precisely the same objective. “There will be no free trade in personal data”, the Luxembourg official told journalists, in reference to transatlantic trade negotiations. She even said that she was prepared to analyse the current Safe Harbour agreement, under which American companies, such as Google and Facebook, undertake to deal with the personal data of Europeans in accordance with European protection provisions. This agreement is based on pledges by these same companies, but “these promises are often empty ones”, Reding observed. She is of the opinion that this agreement is “not very safe, at the end of the day” and added that she is prepared to tighten these rules up if necessary.
However, the Commissioner's enthusiasm is not shared by everyone. Some of the capitals feel that, although this Franco-German contribution and the now unambiguous commitment of Chancellor Angela Merkel in favour of the protection of the data of European citizens clearly provide strong political impetus for the dossier, definitive conclusion of the reform by May 2014, as the Commissioner hopes for, is not necessarily going to be possible. Although some of the delegations took the floor on Friday to support the contribution, among them Spain, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and Italy, “we must not play down the fact that a significant minority of countries have problems with the text”, according to one source, and the United Kingdom is a clear example of this; nor did London necessarily look particularly favourably on this Franco-German action, one source said.
Over at the Parliament and its committee on civil liberties, although a first opinion vote is scheduled for October (the vote having already been postponed once at the end of May), this will only be the start of negotiations with the Council, which has not yet adopted a general approach, one source commented. At the Council, this general approach is currently expected for December. “Anything is possible, but we will then have to negotiate with the Parliament and carry out all votes required in record time if we hope to conclude the reform under this legislative period”, the same source added.
The French justice minister said in Vilnius that “once the political head of steam is there, everything becomes clearer”, referring to points of agreement and differences of opinion alike. The examination of the text is clearly not over and France feels that more work needs to be done, for example, on “the notions of explicit, rather than 'unambiguous', consent, or the single window for businesses”. France subscribes to the view that the national structures should not be swept away in favour of a single European data protection authority. “But without political impulse, things can be left hanging for a long time”, said Taubira, adding that the Franco-German contribution “is not hot air” and not “just for the sake of saying that France and Germany agree”. The French minister said that the forthcoming transatlantic working group on data protection, which will meet in Brussels on 22 and 23 July, should provide the political decision-makers with proper objective analyses of American surveillance practices, for example, on the legal base used, the working rules observed. “We don't want to have the wool pulled over our eyes, or just rubber-stamp what the Americans tell us to”, the French minister went on to warn. (SP/transl.fl)