A coalition of 17 civil society organisations sent an open letter to the Council of the EU on Monday 20 July to express its serious concerns about the negotiations conducted by the European Commission with the United States with a view to the bilateral framework agreement Enhanced Border Security Partnership (EBSP).
Since 2022, this mechanism has made visa waiver for any partner country conditional on the reciprocal exchange of certain biometric databases in order to automatically screen travellers wanting to travel to the United States.
However, the signatories of the letter believe that the Commission “is seriously deviating” from the mandate granted by the Council of the EU last December, “giving in to US demands in blatant violations of EU law”. They therefore are concerned about “serious interference” in the protection of privacy, in particular the quasi-automatic transfer of biometric data, the absence of human oversight in AI-generated decisions and disproportionate data retention periods (up to “75 years”).
The text also denounces a “risk of unjustified profiling” and that US authorities can share EBSP data with local authorities but the “data protection requirements do not apply to them”.
Also concerned about “the opacity of the negotiations”, the coalition is calling for a firm reaction from the Member States to ensure compliance with European law. It insists that personal data “should not be up for sale”, particularly in relation to a country experiencing “fast democratic backsliding”.
To see the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/mzn (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)