What was the real reason for Obama’s refusal to come to Madrid? Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform said: ‘Obama clearly has no emotional identification with Europe. He has a cool analytical view of allies and partners. When the Europeans can’t provide much to help America solve global security problems, Obama doesn’t want to spend too much time on it’. The cancellation was a blow for the Prime-Minister of Spain. Mr Zapatero, who holds the rotating EU Presidency in the first half of 2010 and was struggling with the new President of the European Council, Van Rompuy, about who first would shake hands with Obama in Madrid. But the President of the US solved the problem and Mr Zapatero could spend his time on solving the towering high financial problems of his country.
It was a hard job for Jerzy Buzek, President of the European Parliament! Usually the Polish MEP is busy with lecturing Russia and inviting former winners of the Sakharov Prize. But on Thursday 11 February, he had to bring bad news to Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and the 25 other heads of EU member states, gathering in the European Council with -for the first time- Herman van Rompuy as their President. Buzek had to tell them that ‘his’ parliament had refused to give its consent to the agreement on banking data transfers to the US via the Swift network.
The 27 EU member states of the Council and the European Commission negotiated the deal with the United States. But since recently the Lisbon Treaty came in force, the European Parliament has the right to reject such an agreement. By doing this, the EP resisted pressure from the Council (the national governments) and the US Administration. The resolution rejecting the agreement was approved by 378 votes to 196, with 31 abstentions. Liberal and socialist MEP’s were in favour of the resolution; Christian-Democrats tried to safe the agreement.
MEP Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the Parliament’s rapporteur on the Swift Agreement, commented that: ‘If the US administration would propose to the US Congress something equivalent to this – to transfer in bulk all bank-data of American citizens to a foreign power- we know what they would say!’.
The EP recognised that financial data are crucial in tracking terrorist activities but it took also the matter of data protection law as well as for example the principle of reciprocity extremely seriously. After rejecting the interim agreement, the European Commission has to prepare the negotiating mandate for a definitive agreement, involving Council and Parliament on an equal footing!
