Belgian premier: EU privacy rules breached
The transfer of confidential banking records by a Belgium-based company to US authorities for use in anti-terrorism investigations breached EU data privacy rules, the premier said today.
The controversy surrounds a secret transfer deal between the US treasury and the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT.
SWIFT routes about 11 million financial transactions daily between 7,800 banks and other financial institutions in 200 countries, recording customer names, account numbers and other identifying information.
“SWIFT finds itself in a conflicting position between American and European law. We have to find a solution … to move as quickly as possible for the European Union to start negotiations with Washington on the issue,” Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said.
“We are really in a conflict situation here,” Finance Minister Didier Reynders said.
Verhofstadt and Reynders spoke after Belgium’s privacy protection commission presented its findings on the case without calling for immediate legal action.
Instead, Belgium would be pushing its EU partners to open talks on a new agreement to get more privacy guarantees from the US side.
“The conclusion is that it is absolutely necessary that negotiations start to get a broad agreement on the transfer of personal financial data,” Verhofstadt said.
“We need a deal here because the fact is that there are more guarantees under EU laws than what you find under American law.”
European data protection officers agreed on Tuesday to continue their fact-finding probe, and to meet again in November to consider recommendations for stricter safeguards on the transfer of such sensitive data.
Belgium wants the review to be as quick as possible.
The report on the Belgian investigation was being anticipated by the European Commission, which cannot launch a probe of its own under EU law, but can draft new recommendations to EU governments on beefing up data protection regulations.
Under current rules, each EU government is responsible for application and enforcement of the common EU data privacy law.
The Belgian commission launched its inquiry in response to questions about the legality of SWIFT’s sharing of banking records with US authorities for use in anti-terror investigations.
The US Treasury has acknowledged that, since the September 11 attacks, it has tracked millions of confidential financial transactions handled by SWIFT.
In its defence, SWIFT reiterated on Monday that it received “significant protections and assurances” that the data transferred to the US was used confidentially.
The company said the US Treasury does not have unlimited access to data stored by SWIFT, and the information it got was only used “for the exclusive purpose of terrorism investigations".
The Belgian government said in June that Washington had subpoenaed data only from SWIFT’s US office, and not from its global headquarters outside Brussels.
