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News Releases
No. 79/07
June 28, 2007
USA TO TAKE ACCOUNT OF EU DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES TO PROCESS DATA RECEIVED FROM SWIFT
The European Union has been given a series of unilateral "representations" by
the United States Treasury Department, which address EU
data protection concerns.
They set conditions in the handling of personal data originating from the EU and
received from SWIFT in the United States on the basis of administrative
subpoenas served by the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.
 European Commission Vice President
Franco Frattini, Commissioner responsible for
Justice, Freedom and Security, stated:
"I welcome the United States' Treasury Department's unilateral
Representations
regarding their handling of EU originating personal data received from SWIFT in
the United States under compulsion of administrative subpoenas, as they take
account of EU
data protection concerns.
"The EU and its most important strategic partner in the fight against
terrorism,
the USA, have to join forces in this fight, including the financing of
terrorism. However, these activities should be done in full respect of
fundamental rights, including notably data protection rights and the right to
privacy of EU citizens.
"I want to warmly thank my services for the strong support received to find in
good cooperation with USA an appropriate and satisfactory approach taking
account of the needs of law enforcement authorities to identify, track and
pursue those who provide financial support for terrorist activities, as well as
providing sufficient data protection guarantees, ensuring that EU citizens data
protection rights are not inappropriately infringed upon.
"The unilateral representations from the US Treasury that the Commission and the
Council will take note of today, and that the Commission considers adequate,
provide for data protection guarantees, but need to be completed by other
actions in order to make lawful the transfer of Swift data also for commercial
purposes.
"I am therefore now looking to SWIFT and to the financial institutions that use
its services to take the necessary steps so that SWIFT will be in compliance
with the Data Protection Directive and may have recourse to the Safe Harbour
mechanism, that allows limitations on its data protection principles for
important public purposes "to the extent necessary to meet national security,
public interest or law enforcement requirements."
In particular, SWIFT should inform its customers and notify the Belgian Data
Protection Authority of the fact that personal data will be transferred to the
US for commercial purposes, where it could be accessed by the US Treasury under
the "Terrorist Finance Tracking Program" and the financial institutions which
use SWIFT's services should ensure that their customers will be so informed.
For further information, please visit:
http://www.eurunion.org/newsweb/HotTopics/persdata.htm .
Further Contact Information
Press and Public Diplomacy
Delegation of the European Commission
2300 M Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037
http://www.eurunion.org/PressRoom
Tel: 202-862-9552
Fax: 202-429-1766
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