MEPs want co-operation with the US to be suspended

Data-sharing and privacy deals ‘should be halted’

The European Parliament voted yesterday (12 March) to adopt a resolution condemning spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA) on EU citizens.

The non-binding resolution, which closes a six-month inquiry into the US surveillance system, calls on the European Commission and member states to suspend existing agreements with the United States in response to the spying revelations. Agreements on bank-data-sharing and internet privacy should be suspended, and data protection should be kept out of EU-US free-trade talks and negotiated separately, the resolution says. It calls for a ‘digital bill of rights’ for EU citizens.

Information about the NSA emerged last year as a result of leaks from former NSA employee Edward Snowden, who is now in Moscow under asylum. Centre-left British MEP Claude Moraes, who led the Parliament debate, said the resolution he drafted is just the start of an EU response. “Let’s turn this into something positive and lasting into the next Parliament,” he told colleagues on Tuesday. Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, agreed. “With this debate we have not finished our job. The job now only begins,” she said.

The evidence for the Moraes report included a written response to MEPs’ questions from Snowden himself, which was delivered to the Parliament on Friday (7 March). This contained further information about what Snowden says was a US strategy of pitting EU member-state intelligence services against each other. The NSA’s foreign-affairs division worked with EU national governments to “search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorised by lawmakers,” Snowden wrote.

“The result is a European bazaar, where a European Union member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping centre on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesn’t search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesn’t search for Germans.”

No support from ECR

The European Conservatives and Reformists group said it could not support the report because it calls for suspending agreements with the US. British ECR MEP Timothy Kirkhope said the Parliament’s investigation was irrational. “This committee has not been interested in finding the facts, it has just been the most expensive and painstaking exercise in collecting together press cuttings and allegations,” he said.

Dutch Liberal MEP Sophie In ‘t Veld pointed out that this week the US Senate launched a similar “irrational” investigation into allegations that American spy services have been monitoring the US Congress. “This parliament is the only parliament in Europe that has held an inquiry, whereas the Council has been shamefully silent,” she said. “Massive violations of EU citizens’ rights are being ignored [by member states]. Shame on you!”

Snowden used his response to repeat his request for political asylum in the EU. The Parliament’s civil- liberties committee voted against including a call for asylum in the resolution.