MEPs fear secret anti-terrorism measures

Senior members of the European Parliament are warning that future rules on exchanging sensitive personal data for anti-terrorism purposes could be drawn up in the secret by EU governments.

German centre-right MEP Elmar Brok said yesterday (26 September) in Strasbourg that plans in the new treaty to allow the Council of Ministers to decide rules on exchanging data for security purposes without democratic scrutiny could lead to problems getting the reform treaty ratified.

"It could lead to the accusation that Europe is being used so that personal data disappear in bureaucracy without checks by Parliament and the court," Brok said. This could feature in ratification debates in some member states, he added.

Brok and the two other MEPs taking part in the intergovernmental conference, which is drafting the new treaty, are calling for the European Parliament to be able to scrutinise any new rules on the exchange of personal data for foreign and security purposes and for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be able to review decisions.

Brok said that this provision, which would apply to sensitive data such as the passenger name records which EU airlines are required to transfer to US law enforcement agencies, was a "small step which would have an enormous effect".

Parliament challenged an initial decision by the Council of Ministers to hand over the data but the Council withdrew the measure and reached a new agreement with the US under third pillar provisions for justice and home affairs, where the Parliament and the ECJ have no say.

Dutch Liberal MEP Sophie in ’t Veld, who has campaigned against the deal on passenger name records, said that the proposed special regime for data rules showed that the Council wanted to agree security measures away from public scrutiny.

"The fight against terrorism is in-between regular policing and security policy and our fear has been they would try and shift all the measures against terrorism into CFSP [Common Foreign and Security Policy] so there would be lower data protection," she said. She added that the EU constitution, which was rejected by voters in the Netherlands and which the reform treaty seeks to replace, would have brought about improvements in data protection. "But this is one of the things that were lost."

Brok said that progress had been made on agreeing on the details of the reform treaty but that over the last week negotiations among legal experts had been blocked over issues relating to justice and home affairs and the UK’s opt-out.

MEPs and several member states are concerned about whether the UK could opt in to drafting new legislation on justice and home affairs and then opt out once it had watered down proposals.

An issue which is causing difficulty is a proposal to convert existing legislation on police and judicial co-operation, such as the law introducing a European arrest warrant or existing legislation on the Schengen visa-free travel area, into standard EU law. This means taking legislation agreed under third pillar procedures without input from the European Parliament and ECJ scrutiny and replacing it with new proposals which MEPs would have to agree and whose implementation would be overseen by the ECJ. But the UK has opposed this move and rejected an offer to delay the application of this decision by three years after the entry into force of the new treaty.

Senior members of the European Parliament are warning that future rules on exchanging sensitive personal data for anti-terrorism purposes could be drawn up in the secret by EU governments.