Access to EU bank accounts by the US?

By December 1, Sweden, the current holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency, was to have passed a measure that would have given the United States wide ranging access to the EU bank accounts, particularly international transactions, as part of terror inquiries. But the date chosen, Dec. 1 being the date when the new Lisbon Treaty comes into effect, was unfortunate for the US investigators. Germany will not rubber stamp the proposal, and France, Austria and Finland have also expressed reservations particularly regarding the speed with which the measure was being pushed.
The new Lisbon Treaty grants the European Parliament powers of control over decisions and that means lengthy debates. Commenting about the attempt to push the deal through the EU, the German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said: “It is a snub directed at the European Parliament, a parliament which has been critical of this deal and which, after the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect, will have a right to help make this decision.” Thilo Weichert of the Independent State Center for Data Privacy also warned against the deal saying that “handing over data when there are well-established grounds for suspicion is one thing. But allowing the US wholesale access is quite another.The US maintain that this is only about the fight against terrorism. But we know that the US understanding of the war on terror doesn’t fit with the understanding of basic human rights in Europe.”