Four EU countries oppose SWIFT bank data deal with US ahead of Lisbon Treaty

Opposition from four member states to a draft agreement between the EU and US allowing the use of banking data in anti-terrorist investigations is likely to delay a decision until after 1 December, drawing the European Parliament into the decision making process. Citing data privacy concerns, Germany, Austria, France and Finland are opposing the text negotiated by the Swedish EU presidency and the European Commission allowing American authorities access to information from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) – the interbank transfer service.

Der Spiegel reports that the new German justice minister says Berlin is not comfortable with the EU measure and it seems likely that the Germans may scupper the deal, which is supposed to be pushed through at an EU meeting in Brussels at the end of November.

Germany is not the only country to have doubts. France, Austria and Finland have also expressed reservations, particularly regarding to the speed with which the new measure was being pushed through.

According to the draft proposal, the EU would allow Swift to share the “name, account number, address, national identification number, and other personal data” with US authorities, if there is a suspicion that the person is in any way involved with terrorist activity.

The requests for information “shall be tailored as narrowly as possible” to prevent too much customer data from being evaluated by police and intelligence officers.

However, if the provider of data “cannot identify the data that would respond to the request for technical reasons, all potentially relevant data shall be transmitted in bulk” to the state that requests it. Eurjust, the bloc’s judicial co-operation agency, is also set to be informed by the information request.

The transmitted data may be kept in the US for up to five years before being deleted.

Postponing a decision on the deal beyond 30 November will have other legal implications, as the European Parliament will have a bigger say in the decision-making process once the Lisbon Treaty enters into force on 1 December.