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 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ All archives of messages are stored permanently and are available to the world wide web community at large at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/data-protection.html If you wish to leave this list please send the command leave data-protection to [log in to unmask] All user commands can be found at : - http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/help/commandref.htm (all commands go to [log in to unmask] not the list please) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^