The European Union is close on finalising new rules to limit data transfers from EU nations to the US, in the wake of the NSA’s revelations of the US and British mass surveillance programme.
In addition to making harder for US servers and social media service providers to move European data to third countries, the proposed policies would prohibit the data transfer subject to EU law or a new EU-US pact, according to The Guardian.
The proposed regime said: "Without any concrete agreement there would be no data processing by telecommunications and internet companies allowed."
New rules would also allow levying severe fines, likely to be running into the billions for the first time, for not complying with them.
German Greens MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht said as parliamentarians, as politicians, as governments, they have lost control over their intelligence services.
"We have to get it back again," Albrecht said.
However, reports reveal that the latest proposal will not be able to deal with all problems, portraying the fact that the EU has no control over national or European security and pacts between the US and individual European regimes might enable bypassing rules.
"This regulation does not regulate the work of intelligence services," Albrecht said.
"Of course, national security is a huge loophole and we need to close it. But we can’t close it with this regulation."
These plans were originally mooted two years ago, and were dismissed following lobbying from the US, while a push to renew them came in the wake of surveillance disclosures by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
EU commissioner for justice Viviane Reding said the recent data scandals prove that sensitivity has been growing on the US side of how important data protection really is for Europeans.
"All those US companies that do dominate the tech market and the internet want to have access to our goldmine, the internal market with over 500 million potential customers. If they want to access it, they will have to apply our rules.
"The leverage that we will have in the near future is thus the EU’s data protection regulation.
"It will make crystal clear that non-European companies, when offering goods and services to European consumers, will have to apply the EU data protection law in full. There will be no legal loopholes anymore."
