German MEPs Lead Euro-Revolt Against Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
In a major blow to transatlantic cooperation on counterterrorism, the European Parliament voted last week to reject an interim EU-U.S. agreement on bank data sharing, which would have permitted American investigators to continue inspecting selected European bank transfer data as part of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP).
The so-called SWIFT agreement — named for the Belgian-based bank cooperative that holds the data — was defeated by a vote of 378 to 196 with 31 abstentions. The vote was held anonymously in what would normally be described as a secret ballot. (As it happens, European Parliament nomenclature reserves the latter designation for a separate procedure, somehow managing to construe a meaningful distinction between a “secret ballot” and “electronic voting, [in which] anonymity is preserved and it isn’t possible to know how each MEP voted.”)
The agreement was defeated despite the submission to the European institutions of a report by French investigative judge Jean-Louis Bruguière that found the TFTP to be a “vital counterterrorism tool.” The Bruguière report specifically identifies numerous terror plots that were either elucidated or indeed quashed with the help of the TFTP. These include the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2004 “M-11” Madrid train bombings, the 2005 London transport bombings, the transatlantic airliner plot that was broken up in the UK in 2006, the planned “Sauerland cell” attack on U.S. military installations in Germany that was broken up in 2007, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The report also outlines numerous safeguards put in place by the U.S. Treasury Department and SWIFT in order to assure that data is exclusively requested and used for the purpose of ongoing terror investigations.
Despite the anonymity of the voting procedure, review of the events leading up to the vote makes clear just which block of delegates led the charge against the SWIFT agreement. Members of the Socialist, Green, and “United Left” groups undoubtedly voted by and large against it, and those of the two major “conservative” groups, the European People’s Party (EPP) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), undoubtedly voted by and large for it.
But support and opposition did not run strictly along party lines. Most notably, the virtual entirety of the German parliamentary cohort — the largest national grouping comprising some 99 delegates — appears to have opposed the agreement regardless of party affiliation. The German opposition evidently included — as Germany’s paper of record, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has noted — “nearly all” the representatives of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The CDU/CSU is part of the main “conservative” formation in the European Parliament, the EPP.
One week before the plenum vote, in the first clear sign that the agreement would go down to defeat, a majority in the parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs already voted to recommend its rejection. After the committee vote, German committee member Manfred Weber explained to Austria’s Wiener Zeitung that his own CDU/CSU delegation and the Austrian mainstream “conservative” party, the ÖVP, had broken away from the other national delegations in the EPP group and were opposing the agreement. On Weber’s account, the Socialist group displayed “a similar pattern” — an apparent reference to support for the SWIFT agreement among Spanish socialists.
Both the leading German role in killing the agreement and the remarkable cross-party homogeneity of the German opposition were clearly on display in the parliamentary debate that preceded the plenum vote. (Click here to view the full debate with simultaneous translation.) Thus, three of the four group leaders who took the floor to oppose the agreement were Germans. Working himself up into a typically fine lather, Martin Schulz, the leader of the Socialist group, said:
Mr. President! In his book Gulliver’s Travels, the Irish author Jonathan Swift sent Gulliver on a trip … to the land of the midgets. But Mr. Gulliver noticed that he had [instead] arrived in the land of the giants. It seems to me somewhat that American diplomacy has followed Gulliver’s habits in believing that it could treat the European Parliament like a group of midgets. But that’s wrong. …
This agreement … breathes the spirit of the security ideology of the United States of America, but it does not breathe the spirit of the protection of the fundamental rights that we as European deputies must guarantee for the citizens of this continent.
“which would have permitted American investigators to continue inspecting selected European bank transfer data”
You know, I can’t think of one single reason why anyone should trust the US government with their financial data!
Gotta love our governement and MEPs. Buying stolen Data with one hand, blocking counterterrorism with the other.
Good Lord, over here Obama would be considered a conservative.
So, the European left don’t want transparency in financial transactions. Fine. End all those financial transactions. Tell the Europeans we’re leaving—Europe, Nato, Afghanistan, the UN, have a nice day, don’t call us we’ll call you. It’s about time we reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine. Provide for you own defense in your Balkans backyard, and the bottom of those other bird cages you call the cradle of Western civilization. Oh, and make your own arrangements for energy with the Russians and the Arab world. See ya!.
So terrorist enjoy a right to privacy not extended to German citizens? It’s okay to use stolen bank data to hunt down otherwise law abiding citizens who don’t wish to shere their (alredy taxed) earnings with the government. But we better not track terror funds, that would be wrong. Maybe the terrorists should start offering tax-free mutual funds to Europeans.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=a92Nr0w_IHL4
I second Michael (in England)
“Germany, however, abstained from the vote, reportedly on account of “data protection” concerns”
Germans have a good reason for that : their past !
now, the terrorists find easier to finance their jihad through the London city international finances establisments, that have octopusian and secret ramifications, ie http://tinyurl.com/dfav7g
Sounds like they got into line because of threats from Bush, not from the jihadists. They don’t fear Obama.
6@ic
>They don’t fear Obama.
More like the USA is increasingly a has-been sideline nation after Bush trampled over the longstanding accord with Europe.
“Laughing stock” is more apt.
Focusing on US-German relations, we Germans face several problems: We are not only lost in translation but also in definition. For us, cooperation refers to working together to accomplish shared goals, while the US sees US-European bank data sharing as ‘an opportunity for American investigators to continue to inspecting ..’.So Americans are allowed to focus on data of our terrorists. Who is a terrorist? It might be worth to focus on Siemens and Co. too, while we have no access to US data. Don, ‘ transparency in financial transactions’ is an opportunity Europeans should offer the US. However, US Americans should not be too concerned: You get what you want. At present, Americans try to convince relevant Europeans of the American case. Usual methods: Carrot and stick. The citizens of Europe will loose. As usual.
The reason of not trusting the FBI or other US Government investigators are good ones. However I can’t help but think that the same people who pumped $300 million into our 2008 elections may be spreading around a bit of money to keep their transactions off the record. If it is George Soros and friends of Obama don’t look for the EU Parlement to ever agree.
You missed out a very telling comment from your report ; the question was posed that if a Bill was sent to Congress to allow European authorities to have bank details of American citizens ,what would the answer be . It is only reasonable to expect that the agreement be reciprocal
Marianne,
How would you suggest that we find the financeers of terrorism and the local cells that receive money? Does the European Foreign Minister have a plan?
kochevnik: Bush “trampled over the longstanding accord with Europe”?
The accord where we spent money on the defense of Europe while Europeans enjoy the benefit? Good – he should have really trampled it by moving our troops East places that actually need help or just bring them home. Europe is a dying rapidly.
What is missing from all this is RICIPROCITY. You inspect our financial data; we inspect yours. You fingerprint our tourists; we fingerprint yours.
#13 Michael
especially if they are bankers
Germany is save havens for terrorists.The law abiding citizens have no privacy at all. There has been a huge data server called ELSA installed recently. All data such as social security, health and banking information are gatherd, with no exclusion. So the german decision to oppose the swift ist nothing than a fake.
Apart from this all telephone calls and internet traffic is scanned. That is no orwellian fiction but reality in Germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,669722,00.html
ELSA should facilitate bureaucracy concerning employer-employee-state affairs. No documents on paper from now on. We can alter and/or control it, because it is a German affair. What happens to data the US collects? In 1990, Americans kept their word concerning German unity. That we will never forget. However, then Americans applied ‘global economist’ rules in Germany, then Lehman sold worthless papers rated AAA by American investment bankers to Germans and now we know that Goldman Sachs ‘helped’ Greece to join the Euro. Another problem to solve created by US institutions. So US citizens, can we trust you? Concerning terrorists: We used to know the people who lived next to us. Now we leave alone people who have difficulties, who wish rules. Fanatic Moslems care. No empathy, that is our problem.