EU Parliament Passes Call Against Surveillance And For Digital “New Deal”; TTIP Can Proceed

A huge majority of the European Parliament today called for a stop to mass surveillance and a digital “New Deal” to enpower European citizens and companies following a six-month inquiry into the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence service surveillance programmes by the Parliamen’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

Today’s report calls on both US and EU member states to prohibit blanket mass surveillance activities. Rapporteur Claude Moreas (Socialists and Democrat, S&D) expressed his satisfaction in a press conference immediately after the vote with 544 in favour and 78 opposed. [clarified]

Moraes mentioned a stop to the Safe Harbour Program which currently allows data transfers to the US, better protection of whistleblowers in the EU, and judicial redress for EU citizens as some of the measures included in the report.

President Obama’s statements on judicial redress in his December speech fell short of what the European Parliament was looking for, Moraes said. The requests made in the report should be addressed step by step, he said, with a timeline reaching into the next legislature after the upcoming EU election in May.Moraes will travel to the US the week after next to continue talks on the surveillance issues.

While applauding the vote as a clear signal to governments, the Green Party Group wrote in a press release that the reluctance to grant protection to Edward Snowden was a huge disappointment. S&D and the European Peoples Party (EPP) both voted against the respective proposals from the Green and Left Party Group.

Greens and Left also lost the vote to freeze Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations as long as US mass surveillance is continuing. How the requests by Parliament will be followed up by other institutions remains to be seen, especially after the election in May. On Safe Harbour, the EU Commission is in charge and has sent a list of 13 recommendations to the US so far for example.

The same is true for the EU data protection package passed in Parliament today during the same session with an overwhelming majority.