Tag: European Parliament

Access has submitted input to the European Parliament (EP) Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) on a draft report on human rights and technology. This report focuses on “the impact of intrusion and surveillance systems on human rights in third countries.”

On February 11th, the European Parliament (EP) has adopted a resolution in which it commits to work toward finalising, by the end of the year, a directive on EU Passenger Name Records (PNR). Despite serious privacy concerns raised by civil society organisations, discourses privileging the need to reinforce EU anti-terrorism measures seem to have prevailed over European citizens’ fundamental rights.

Tomorrow morning, the European Parliament legal services will release its long-awaited study on the Court of Justice of the EU’s ruling on the Data Retention Directive. Access obtained a copy of the document, which concludes that the EU’s powers to legislate on data retention matters are now limited.

Migration Commissioner Avramopoulos decided not to wait for the opinion of the CJEU on EU-Canada PNR and signaled his desire to quickly reach an agreement on the 2011 passenger data directive.

This week, the conference of presidents of the European Parliament gave its final approval to the appointments of Giovanni Buttarelli and Wojciech Rafa? Wiewiórowski to become the new heads of the European Union Data Protection Authority.

Yesterday, the European Parliament voted by a large majority to refer the EU-Canada passenger name record agreement (PNR) to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) to assess its compliance with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Ever since CJEU’s landmark ruling invalidating the Data Retention Directive last April, a number of ongoing and proposed agreements that include data retention schemes have been put under the microscope. Yesterday’s vote is the first of many steps to ending indiscriminate and unlawful surveillance programmes in the EU.

In an email exchange with Access, Cecilia Malmström, EU Commissioner-designate for Trade, declared to never have put into question the validity of the email acquired by our organisation through a Freedom of Information Act request, shedding light on the EU Home Affairs Department’s collaboration with the U.S. government to undermine EU privacy reform efforts.

In an email exchange with Access, Cecilia Malmström, EU Commissioner-designate for Trade, declared to never have put into question the validity of the email acquired by our organisation through a Freedom of Information Act request, shedding light on the EU Home Affairs Department’s collaboration with the U.S. government to undermine EU privacy reform efforts.

The E.U.’s current Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, was confirmed this morning as Commissioner for Trade during a vote in the International Trade (INTA) Committee of the European Parliament. This vote follows a hearing that took place on Monday September 29th during which Members of the European Parliament (MEP) questioned the Commissioner-designate for three hours.

Today, Access together with several NGOs, consumer groups, and industry representatives sent an open letter to the Council of the European Union, calling for Telecoms ministers to support strong net neutrality rules in the E.U.. The Council is currently reviewing the proposal of the Telecoms Single Market Regulation, voted on by the European Parliament in April.