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European lawmakers are considering a measure that would prevent the United States from monitoring international money transfers. Some European leaders says the monitoring compromises the privacy of its citizens, but the United States considers it a key weapon in the fight against terrorism. The World’s Gerry Hadden has the story.

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MARCO WERMAN: Europe is poised to scrap a deal that has given the United States what the U.S. calls one of its key weapons against terrorists, the ability to monitor international money transfers.  Nearly all such transactions are done through a Belgian company called Swift.  The United States has been demanding and getting Swift transfer data since just after September 11th, including transactions in Europe.  But some European leaders have said their citizen’s privacy is being violated and they want it to stop.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

MALE VOICE 1:  The report is adopted so the recommendation is to reject the agreement.  Is that understood?

GERRY HADDEN: With that vote the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament this week recommended blocking American access to European money transfer records.  Committee member Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert says the full Parliament should follow suit in a vote on Thursday.

JEANINE HENNIS-PLASSCHAERT:  Some very basic principles are being violated under the current conditions of the agreement.  On top of that we also have the problem of not having access to all relevant documents and information.  So it’s very difficult for us to give our consent.

HADDEN: The European Parliament has a long list of demands it wants the U.S. to meet before allowing further access to Swift’s records.  It wants guarantees that Europeans’ personal information won’t be shared with third parties that information related to dead end leads will be destroyed and above all, that European authorities will be kept abreast of terrorist investigations.  Nigel Inkster of the London based International Institute for Strategic Studies says the U.S. is unlikely to accept that.

NIGEL INKSTER:  The question that arises, who exactly is it you’re keeping in the loop?  With whom would you actually have to share this information?  And how confident could you be that they would actually provide the adequate safeguards?

HADDEN: The U.S. has been subpoenaing the records of the private money transfer giant Swift since just after the 9-11 attacks.  Swift is actually based in Belgium, outside of U.S. jurisdiction.  But until this year, it kept copies of all transactions on back up servers in the U.S.; they were fair game for U.S. investigators.  The subpoenas were top secret until 2006 when the New York Times broke the story.  Some European officials were furious to learn that millions of European transactions were open to U.S. scrutiny without their knowledge so they pressured Swift to move its European records back to Europe.  Swift recently complied.  U.S. Treasury officials did not respond to interview requests, but they insist the Swift records are invaluable.  In Berlin last week the Treasury’s Adam Szubin said that information gleaned from Swift transactions helped German authorities break up a radical Islamic cell planning attacks in 2007.  Again, Nigel Inkster.

INKSTER:  The main point about this is not so much the money per se, but the information it conveys about relationships.  Who is in touch with whom?  Who is communicating with whom?  I think that probably is the single biggest element of value in this. Its one of these capabilities which clearly intelligence and investigative agencies feel, I think there’s some justification, that they’re better off having than not.

HADDEN: In recent days U.S. officials have been pushing Europe to leave access to Swift open but skeptical Parliamentarians like Alexander Alvaro appear ready to resist.

ALEXANDER ALVARO:  It is very unusual that we have American officials putting so many pressures on members of this house, including the President of the Parliament, interfering in such a way.  I do not see that we lobby the U.S. Congress or U.S. Senate in a similar way.

HADDEN: But the desire to shut the U.S. out is not embraced by all Parliamentarians.  Michael Cashman from the U.K. says Europe should help the U.S. fight terrorists however it can.

MICHAEL CASHMAN:  My citizens want me to stop the financing of terrorists and terrorist groups and organized crime that feed it.  So we may say, look, we’re angry, we should have been consulted, we want more input.  But I think we’re in danger of achieving nothing.

HADDEN: That’s because the U.S. might try to forego the EU altogether and negotiate access agreements directly with the Netherlands and Switzerland, the two countries now hosting Swift’s back up servers.  For The World, I’m Gerry Hadden.

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