MEPs THREATEN COURT ACTION IF COMMISSION DOES NOT WITHDRAW PASSENGER DATA
TRANSFERS DECISION
http://eld.europarl.eu.int


Members of the European Parliament today threatened to seek a ruling by
the European Court of Justice if the European Commission does not withdraw
its decision that protection for air passenger data transferred to the US
is adequate. MEPs adopted by 229 votes to 202 with 19 abstentions a report
by Dutch Liberal MEP Johanna Boogerd-Quaak (D66).

Welcoming the result of the vote, Mrs Boogerd-Quaak said:

"MEPs today spoke up loud and clear in defence of the civil liberties of
European citizens. By a clear majority, in the face of intense lobbying,
Parliament has said to the Commission "Go back to the drawing board, this
agreement is not good enough". We are not satisfied with the privacy
safeguards secured by the Commission, and we now expect them to withdraw
their decision and come back with better safeguards. If they do not,
Parliament has indicated that we are willing to go to the European Court
of Justice. I believe we have a good case, given the opposition of
European Data Protection Commissioners to these transfers of data."

"We are not opposed to an agreement, and we understand and share the
imperative to fight terrorism. We simply do not accept that we have to
ride roughshod over our civil liberties to tackle terrorism effectively. A
key safeguard would be to limit the transfers to only 19 data fields,
rather than the current 34, and the data should not be stored for such a
long period of time. We should only send the data we think is appropriate,
filtering out sensitive information, rather than giving the US complete
access to all data."

"Next week, the Civil Liberties Committee will vote on the agreement
between the Commission and the United States. If the Commission does not
withdraw its adequacy finding, I expect the same majority that we secured
today to vote against the agreement next week."

Following next week's vote in the Civil Liberties Committee, the full
Parliament will vote on the EU-US 'light agreement' at its plenary session
in the week of 19 April.

ENDS

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