“EU Parliament stands for higher data protection principles” – MP

The European Parliament is to vote on a deal that would allow the US to access information on the bank transfers of European citizens. America says it is a necessary measure to track terror suspects.

But critics say the proposal, which has been discussed between the EU and US for months, violates human rights.

Jan Philipp Albrecht, a member of the European Parliament, says data protection rights are not that high at the moment in the US, and America perhaps also has to change a little bit when it comes to its security policy.

“We as the European Parliament are standing for higher data protection principles because we have higher [ones] in the EU, and if it comes to stronger cooperation, then there also has to be a stronger basis of data protection rights,” Albrecht said.

“We work together with the United States very strongly on fighting terrorism and on security, but it has to be on the basis of the rule of law and on the protection of fundamental rights of EU citizens, and so we are going to have strong minimum standards in the field of data protection and this is excluding, from my point of view, the possibility of mass data transfers,” he said. “It should be an individualized judicial overview of transfers.”