EU: Law enforcement agencies win out over privacy
01 May 2002
European Parliament caves in to demands of EU governments on data retention & surveillance: a document leaked to Statewatch shows it is to become compulsory for communications providers to keep traffic data
This feature looks at the "deal" done between the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union over data retention, the vote in the European Parliament and the leaked text of the draft "Framework Decision on the retention of traffic data and on access to this data in connection with investigations and prosecutions" (prepared by the Belgian government).
The European Parliament caves in
In December 2001 the Telecommunications Council of the European Union (the 15 EU governments) agreed a "common position" which meant that two key protections in the 1997 EU Directive on privacy in telecommunications would be removed. First, the provision that traffic data held by communications providers must be erased once it no longer served its purpose of checking customer billing and second, that member states could adopt laws at a national level to require that traffic data must be retained for a specific period in order for the law enforcement agencies to have access (police, customs, immigration and internal security agencies) to it. On 30 January the European Commission abandoned its long-held opposition to these proposals.
The European Parliament in its 1st reading report, adopted in November 2001, was also strongly opposed (as were the EU's Data Protection Commissioners, the EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party and dozens of civil society groups).
On 18 April the parliament's Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights agreed its 2nd reading report but only by 25 votes to 19 on data retention. Despite the convention that position agreed unanimously on the 1st reading should not be amended again the chair of the Committee, Ana Palacio (PPE, conservative group, now a Minister in the Spanish government), broke ranks and led the demand that the parliament should agree with the Council. The parties voting to maintain opposition to data retention and surveillance were the PSE (Socialist group), the GUE (United Left), the Green/EFA group and the ELDR (Liberal group). A date for the vote in the plenary session of the parliament was set for 30 May.
However, following the vote in the Committee the Spanish Presidency of the Council undertook:
a number of informal contacts.. [with] interested members of the European Parliament with a view to exploring the possibilities for a pre-negotiated agreement on a set of compromise amendments..
Meetings of the Council's Telecommunications Working Party examined "a number of compromise texts" at its meetings on 3 and 13 May. On 15 May Ana Palacio said she intended to submit her own "compromise" agreement to the Council on behalf of the European Parliament - this move was stopped by a meeting of the rapporteurs on the report. But the Council simply used Ana Palaccio's "compromise" and in a report dated 16 May said her amendment was: "acceptable with small modification".
A week before the vote a coalition of 40 civil liberties groups, including Statewatch, sent a letter to all MEPs asking them to reject the Council's position. In addition, the "Stop 1984" campaign collected over 17,000 names on an EU-wide web appeal.
The vote in the plenary session for the "compromise" could however not be delivered without one or more of the political groups breaking ranks. Just after the letter from the civil society coalition went out, just days before the vote, the PSE (Socialist group) broke ranks and joined the PPE (conservative group) to form an "unholy alliance" commanding a clear majority of votes (as they did on the new Regulation on access to EU documents). A "deal" had been done with the Council to the effect that they made some concessions on "spam" and "cookies" and the parliament withdrew its objection to data retention and surveillance.
The PSE rapporteur on the