Group of EU Parliamentarians May Reject EU-US Data Sharing Deal

The Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group in the European Parliament may vote against the EU-US deal on data-sharing, reportedly in the final stage of negotiations, Georg Mayer, an ENF member from Austria, told Sputnik on Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko — On Wednesday, Reuters, citing a document it saw, reported that the European Commission and the United States were negotiating the final details of the so-called Safe Harbour deal on data sharing between EU and US companies.

The talks were halted in 2013 after documents on widespread US spying practices had been revealed by Edward Snowden. Brussels demanded guarantees from the US that EU citizen data would not be transferred to other countries and would be collected in urgent national security cases only.

"I do not think that the US will only collect basic data. We know from the past how hungry the American services are for every data. So no trust in that, also under the experience we made in the negotiations for TTIP. I think – I have to talk to the rest of the ENF group – we will not vote in favor for that agreement," Mayer told Sputnik.

According to the reports, the final deal will envisage a monitoring mechanism for US access to data.

Currently, companies working in the European Union are not allowed to transmit personal data outside the European Economic Area.