US war on terror in EU spotlight

The legality of activity by US security services and Washington’s war on terror will be in the spotlight and under fire in Strasbourg.

MEPs debate the results of a European parliament probe into allegations of illegal CIA activity in Europe – including claims of abductions and detentions.

Investigations have concluded that the CIA has been responsible for “extraordinary renditions”, involving illegal detention and abduction, in Europe.

“In a number of cases, the CIA or other US services have been directly responsible for the illegal seizure, removal, abduction and detention of terrorist suspects on the territory of member states,” a text approved by the parliament's justice commitee on June 12 states.

Divisions

Sparks are set to fly between the parliament’s largest centre-right EPP-ED bloc, some national delegations and socialists, Greens and liberals are set to emerge during Wednesday’s debate.

Particularly sensitive are claims – backed up by air control flight records – that some EU member states have colluded or unwittingly allowed illegal CIA activities on their soil.

Right-wingers are set to push amendments watering down strong wording during a vote on Thursday.

Voting could be close if numbers in the parliament as a whole reflect a June 12 line-up in the parliament's justice committee where abstainers and opponents were four votes away from overturning the critical report.

Swift to anger

MEPs have a second area of US security activity in their sights after demanding EU presidency and European commission statements on transfers of private banking data to US security agencies.

There will be anger that handovers of financial data relating to European banking transactions from the Belgium-based Swift banking consortium only emerged following media reports.

Press coverage – despite Washington attempts to gag newspapers – revealed activities that the ECB, European central banks and the Belgian government  were aware of – a development that will alarm MEPs.

The commission and EU presidency are likely to wash their hands of any competence over the information exchanges which are not covered by data protection law.

European justice commissioner Franco Frattini has argued that if national governments signed up to proposals on data protection and law enforcement the Swift scandal would be covered by law.

Proposals are currently stalled in councils of ministers and Frattini is expected to use situation to urge less national vetoes and more EU decision-making on justice issues.

Slow to agree data rules

Martine Roure, the parliament’s lead MEP on data protection and law enforcement, has expressed surprise that parliament MEPs was not informed of the issue while working on relevant legislative dossiers.

“It is surprising, to put it mildly, that the European parliament was not informed about this while examining this very issue in [a] report – on data retention - due to be debated and voted on [this week],” she said.

"We will certainly use the plenary to demand clarification”.

Jean-Marie Cavada, chairman of the European parliament’s committee on civil liberties has attacked the US practices as “imperialist”.

“The US has unilaterally broken fundamental rights and democratic principles” he said.

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