EU should play hardball with US on privacy guarantees before data exchange

12.02.36pm UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 13th Mar 2008

The EU is being urged to take at the EU-US justice & home affairs summit today a much more robust attitude on high data protection standards before agreeing exchanges data on travellers.

Following the fiasco of the Czech government agreeing bilaterally to supply more data on travellers - even possibly from EU databases - to secure US 'visa waiver' for its nationals, the Commission is hastily requesting the Council to give it a mandate for an overall EU-US deal involving visa waiver for citizens of all 27 states. This is bound to involve more demands for personal information.

Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, UK Liberal Democrat European justice spokeswoman said:

"The Commission and Member states have had a nasty shock. For years they have been happy to bow to every new American demand for data. Now they find there was no gratitude and no reciprocity on extending visa-free travel, only divide-and-rule."

"They have only themselves to blame as they did not listen to the European Parliament or the European Data Protection Supervisor. Instead of EU solidarity they sought US sweetheart deals. Now chickens have come home to roost it is time for a change of approach, to one which stands up for hard-won EU privacy standards."

"The EU should first put its own house in order by extending normal EU privacy rules to security data, and then export those rules with the data. I see not reason why the EU cannot achieve US compliance with EU standards as in the 'safe harbour' arrangements for commercial data. After all, we are talking about the personal data of EU citizens. They are being let down through the current willingness to water down our rules."

The Commission and Council have come under intense European Parliament criticism for negotiating secretly with the US in the so-called 'High-Level Contact group' to come up with a proposal covering data protection in all future exchanges of personal data to the US. The 10 common data protection principles on which agreement has been reached are weak and full of holes, far below standards in EU data protection directive 95/46 .

The US attitude can be discerned in the recent dismissive remarks of Paul Rosenzweig, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security of the EU seeking to apply to exchange of data for law enforcement purposes "the same tired, failed standards of adequacy that it has applied in its commercial laws."