Brussels, 02/02/2007 (Agence Europe) - On 1 February, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Peter Hustinx said the European Central Bank (ECB) should do more to prevent SWIFT from illegally transferring personal data about millions of people to the United States.
In a report, the EDPS says: "Just as other banks, the ECB can not escape some responsibilities in the SWIFT case which has breached the trust and private lives of many millions of people. Secret, routine and massive access of third country authorities to banking data is unacceptable. The financial community should therefore provide payment systems which do not violate European data protection laws". Every day, US financial company SWIFT makes several million cross-border financial transactions between a thousand or so financial bodies around the world. After the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, SWIFT was under obligation to the US Treasury Department to supply all information in its possession about bank transfers. The ECB argues that like national banks, it has a responsibility to monitor SWIFT's operations but comments in a press release issued on the same day as the new EDPS report: 'The Oversight Group has no authority to oversee SWIFT with regard to compliance with data protection laws'. The ECB therefore urges EU governments to lay down new rules to remove the uncertainty surrounding payment system data protection. In a letter to the President of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee, Jean-Marie Cavada (ALDE, France) and French Socialist MEP Pervenche Beres, the ECB says that in the future it will ask clients for their consent for the use of their data by SWIFT and keep them fully informed. But as Beres points out, this remains an extremely prudent reaction (see EUROPE 9357). Peter Hustinx made his comments on the SWIFT case (which started following reports in the media in June 2006) following a panel of national data protection representatives' findings in November 2006 that SWIFT had violated EU privacy protection legislation (see EUROPE 9313). An investigation last year by the Belgian authorities found that SWIFT violated several items of Belgian legislation covering the protection of privacy, but Belgian prime minister Guy Verhoftstadt said SWIFT would not be taken to court. (bc)