EU suspends Israeli data protection approval plans

Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding this week halted the immediate adoption of an EU declaration that Israeli data protection systems are in line with European standards. But she made it clear that it was still the intention to press ahead.“A decision has been delayed,” said her spokesman.  “It’s not correct to say the proposal has been withdrawn. There were no conclusions from today’s meeting and the commission continues to analyse the situation.

 

Under current data protection legislation, personal data cannot be stored outside of EU boundaries. EU member states can request certain information on the citizens of other member states and this facility has been extended to some non-EU nations such as the USA and Canada because an EU committee has concluded that their data protection standards can be trusted.

 

The Irish Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern had voiced concern about the use of eight fake Irish passports by the alleged Israeli assassins of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. The Government feels that Israel cannot be trusted on data protection because of the passports affair, which, they say, has put Irish passport holders' lives at risk in the Middle East. The Irish government believes data used in the forged documents was gleaned from the official inspection of travellers’ passports. 

 

Ahern said: “Given the fact that information which was gleaned illegally from Irish passports…we had to put up some protest in relation to the continuance of transfer of data to Israel. The existing data protection law in Israel only applies to auto processing. It doesn’t relate to manual processing which would possibly include transcribing of passport details by hand.”

 

After the decision to put the move on hold, Ahern's spokesman commented: “Effectively today the EU Commission has accepted Ireland’s position that we need far more information on those safeguards, what powers the data protection commissioner has there – is he independent? – and so on.”