Strasbourg, 04/05/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament has finally, as sought by its rapporteur, Johanna Boogerd-Quaak (Democracy 66), refused (301 for, 343 against, with 18 abstentions) the urgent request for an agreement with the USA on processing airline passenger data transfers. During April's session in Strasbourg, Parliament requested that the Court of Justice be approached with regard to the compatibility of this agreement with European rules on personal data protection (EUROPE 22 April p 12). The rapporteur explained that the Council had not sent the text, which still did not exist in all the new languages of the Union and the enlarged Parliament is not able to proceed to its first vote "with its eyes closed". Austrian Christian Democrat Hubert Pirker says the opposite is true: the data is sent in all cases but a clear legal structure is needed, he affirmed. President of the Parliament, Pat Cox, explained that the Court of Justice had been approached and would remain involved despite whatever the vote was today. After voting, Pat Cox gave warning, this kind of problem (the absence of a text in all languages) would happen sometimes and that they were in danger of creating a precedent of not voting if they called for a no vote on the matter. The first vote of the enlarged Parliament, pointed out French Socialist, Olivier Duhamel, will be the result of political dissension but that the left had in fact won the vote on this case.
Ms Boogerd-Quaak declared that they had already voted on this agreement five times. She also said that she hoped that the Council had finally understood that "no" meant "no". She was pleased that this first vote of the enlarged European Parliament had sent out a clear signal: that they would stay close to the USA in the fight against terrorism but not at the price of their democratic rights.