Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America on the processing and transfer of Financial Messaging Data from the European Union to the United States for purposes of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program

The objective of this instrument was “to make sure that designated providers of international financial payment messaging services [in reality, the agreement is primarily intended to cover the company “Swift”] make available to the US Treasury financial payment messaging data stored in the territory of the EU necessary for preventing and combating terrorism and its financing”. This agreement follows a change in the architecture of Swift: while all data managed by Swift were previously stored in the US, an important part of these data will soon be stored only in the EU. Provisional application as from 1/2/2010 was provided. With the Lisbon Treaty, approval by the European Parliament was necessary before the conclusion of the Agreement. The EP rejected the agreement on 11/2/2010. A new EU-US negotiation started in May 2010 and led to a new agreement signed on 28/6/2010 and approved by the European Parliament on 8/7/ 2010. The agreement entered into force on 1/8/2010.