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EU Overturns Agreement With US On Banking Data
Following the lead of the civil liberties committee which last week recommended dropping it (against the wishes of the US), qmaqdk writes "The EU parliament overturned the previous agreement with the US which allowed US intelligence agencies to access EU banking data."
Good for them, way to grow a spine, Europe! Now if only American banks had the same motivation to protect its customers data from the very same agencies.
Now they'll just have to go back to the old fashioned way.
In case of emergency, break law
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
About time the EU showed some backbone and told the US where to stick it. The US has bent everyone else over and had their way far too long. Now that the US's economy is a mess, the dollar is weak and getting weaker and the Euro is fast taking the place the Dollar once had, the US needs to be sent a strong, loud and clear message that it's hay day is over and it's going to have to rely upon diplomacy, cooperation and fair play instead of idle threats and ham-fisted foreign policy towards it's allies.
In case of ambivalence, create emergency
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Americans that want to avoid taxes, can now bank in Europe again.
Right, so to stop a few corrupt individuals and companies in the US avoiding paying tax in the US by banking in Europe, every banking transaction that passes through Europe (or the EU, with 27 countries and over 500m people - that's more than all of North America) should be reported to the US... Something about setting ones own house in order before messing with other people's springs to mind.
Moving on, it is nice to see that the (democratically elected) European Parliament is finally able to stand up to the (appointed) Council of Ministers (and the US); the Lisbon Treaty does have its good points (even if it was pushed through in a rather undemocratic way). Now if only the rest of it could get implemented and the Swedish Pirate Party could get their second MEP into office.
For starters, we don't seem to be bombarded with "with us or against us" rhetoric.
Also, current administration has at least enough tact to not encourage negative attitued towards, say, France; or "Old Europe".
One that hath name thou can not otter
Actually, as I understand it, this one was more a case of I'll show you yours if you'll show me mine.
The intelligence "sharing" is done precisely because each side could get in legal and/or political trouble for spying on its own citizens without good cause. On the other hand, if it's just foreign intelligence provided by a friendly state, well, that's OK, then. This is as much one in the eye for certain EU governments (whose appointed representatives previously forced this measure through at European level mere hours before the Lisbon Treaty kicked in and meant the elected MEPs would get a say, remember) as it is for the US.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It seems to me the US is quick to access other countries' data, but it far less willing to provide equal access to internal data as well.
Hence this would either level the playing ground or put a stop to US demands.
Well, if Bush was as bad with a teleprompter than Obama is without one, then I'd say that it's still a definite improvement.
Ah something was denied to the US the US defense trigger some have comes out automatically without thinking. You have to be aware of that this treaty was a mutual spy upon you treaty. The US could not legally spy on the transactions of its own citizense but they could more or less spy upon the europeans, and vice versa, so what happens is that the data gets exchanged (all friend countries so why even doing some spying?) and then suddenly the US government has "YOUR" data (as well as all european governments and foreign agencies).
Before wishing us evil, think twice that the EU government has basically stopped a blatant spy attack of the US government against its own citizens and vice versa. Besides shifting banking data also opens the door to industry espionage especially in the banking sector.
Kicking all this was a good thing for both sides.
I hope the same will happen to whatever the dreaded Acta group currently negotiates. The EU parliament already is pretty pissed that they do not get any information as well there is a very high chance that the Acta groups treaties never will make it through the parliament no matter what is in there, they already made a significant number of people angry so that they vote against it automatically.
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain are the worst but not the least. Most of the countries in Europe have spending and Debt levels that (as a percentage of GDP) are double the US level everyone is worried about. ...
Uhm, the US federal deficit stands at 10.64%, only slightly lower than the 12.5% of Greece, the worst performer in the Euro zone at this time. Portugal seems to have a deficit of 9.3%, Spain 11%. The I in PIGS is Ireland with 11%, not Italy. Mind you, these are the worst performers in the Euro zone, and relatively small economies, the average figures of of the entire Euro zone are looking a lot better than the US right now, and definitely better than the UK. The market doesn't only look at cold, hard figures though.
About the Euro tanking vs the dollar, I remember almost a decade ago, the Euro was worth about $0.70, now it stands at twice that amount. Both those extreme values are unrealistic and harmful, it would be better to have a stable exchange rate close to 1:1
Was this bank service, like, handling the transactions that finance world terror groups and insuring their privacy?
I'm sorry, I don't see why that excuses a foreign Government monitoring the financial transactions of people, companies and financial institutions in my country.