EU approves data-sharing SWIFT agreement with US authorities

EU interior ministers have struck an interim deal to give the US access to banking data handled by SWIFT. During their meeting in Brussels today, ministers agreed an interim deal for nine months. Germany, Austria, Greece and Hungary abstained from the vote on Monday, allowing the controversial measure to pass. The EU needs unanimity to agree international treaties, such as the SWIFT agreement, but abstentions do not count as votes against.

The EU needed to strike a new deal with the US because SWIFT is transferring much of its data business to servers located in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Without an agreement, the US would no longer be able to consult the data. Supporters of the deal say that the data examined by US law enforcement agencies has been used to prevent terrorist attacks in the EU.

The agreement states that the US will not be allowed to share European data with third countries, and transactions between EU countries will not be monitored. The initial agreement will last for nine months, taking effect February 1, with plans to draw up a longer-term agreement when it expires.

The timing of the deal had irritated the EU parliament because it was signed one day before the Lisbon Reform Treaty, which would have given them equal decision-making powers, comes into effect. The Council had said it would negotiate a long-term agreement with the Parliament under the Lisbon rules and would take full account of the Parliament’s concerns. But it also said that an interim agreement was needed to prevent the flow of SWIFT data to the US authorities being cut off.

The pressure from the Americans was “massive,” said diplomats in Brussels. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently told her European counterparts that the fate of the West hung in the balance. And in the capital cities of Europe, American ambassadors stormed governments like door-to-door salespeople. As one EU foreign minister put it, “they pulled out all the moral and political stops.”

Among the grateful users of the SWIFT data that the Americans were extracting were European security agencies. The services are not actually allowed to gather this kind of information themselves. Which is why European anti-terror experts and their political representatives made a point of staying on cozy terms with their American colleagues. As European Commission Vice-President Jacques Barrot has said, trans-Atlantic cooperation in this area is “indispensable” and the data gathered had proven “absolutely useful and effective” in the fight against terrorism.

EU-US SWIFT Agreement: here.