EU, US sign SWIFT terror finance deal

Deutsche Welle writes that the European Union and the US on Monday signed a revised agreement on sharing banking data to investigate suspected terrorist financing, moving the long-running negotiations over the deal a step closer to completion.


Under the revised deal, an EU official would be posted in the US treasury in Washington to scrutinize the transfer of the European banking data to investigators.

Information requests are also to be "tailored as narrowly as possible" and will be checked by Europol, the EU's police coordination agency.

The agreement still needs the green light from the European Parliament, which in February rejected an earlier proposal for US access to the so-called SWIFT database - a European consortium which records financial transactions.

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