The European Commission will reapprove a controversial agreement to share data on terrorist financing with the United States despite criticism from EU lawmakers, according to an individual with direct knowledge of the matter.
American officials acted within their rights when barring a European investigator from reviewing an audit of how the two continents exchange data linked to terrorist financing, EU attorneys said Thursday.
EU lawmakers will discuss controversies later this month surrounding an agreement to share data on terrorist financing with the United States after parliamentarians Thursday called aspects of the deal "unjust."
As the European Union weighs a new raft of data protection standards, some bankers believe that they can't meet both anti-money laundering demands and Europe's privacy expectations, according to an academic.
Despite tightened controls on interbank messaging, some bankers looking to hide the role of their blacklisted clients in international wires need only type a single key on their keyboard, according to experts.
The EU is pushing the United States for answers following reports that the National Security Agency siphoned bank messaging data held in the European Union, possibly in violation of a July 2010 treaty.
Ongoing negotiations between the United States and European Union on a broad data-sharing arrangement will likely be complicated following the leaked disclosure this month of a transnational American surveillance program.
In a congressional hearing last May, sanctions experts outlined how gaps in U.S. and EU blacklists could let designated Iranians and other designees exploit the American banking system. But the witnesses failed to point out one important loophole in international sanctions: interbank cover payments.
Representatives of the world's primary financial messaging platform are lobbying U.S. lawmakers to abstain from blacklisting additional Iranian banks in future and pending legislation, say congressional sources.
The disclosure that U.S. officials have solicited and directly received data from foreign banks on transactions tied to Iran is spurring talks among European lawmakers, according to Alexander Alvaro, an EU Parliament supervisor.
A European Union plan to detect terrorist financing by allowing investigators access to financial messaging information has met strong opposition from European lawmakers concerned about data privacy rights and budgetary constraints.
A European Union Commission report published Thursday concluded that U.S. Treasury officials had abided by all data security provisions contained within a controversial transatlantic bank data sharing treaty.
The European Parliament approved a plan Thursday to allow U.S. terrorism investigators access to international interbank messaging data under a set of conditions intended to protect EU bank privacy.
The United States and European Union tentatively agreed Monday to a plan allowing the sharing of interbank messaging data as part of investigations into terrorism.
The European Commission proposed Wednesday a data sharing agreement that would grant European Union investigators access to information on U.S. bank accounts in cases of suspected terrorist ties.
EU party leaders have rejected delaying a Thursday vote on an interim agreement to share European financial data with U.S. counterterrorism investigators.
The Belgian-based consortium plans to open the center by then end of 2009 as part of an effort to restructure how financial data is transmitted internationally.
The Bush administration suffered a setback Friday when a federal judge rejected its effort to block a civil lawsuit against an international banking consortium that provides the administration with data for terrorist investigations.
The agreement, announced June 27, resulted from months of negotiations after an EU advisory panel found that the consortium's sharing of information with the United States violated EU data protection laws.
An EU advisory panel determined that an international banking consortium violated data protection laws there when it complied with a U.S. administrative subpoena giving the Bush administration access to millions of private financial transaction records.