In a 302 to 219 vote, the European Parliament passed a resolution that will force European Union entities to disclose how much they knew about the US’s secret monitoring of SWIFT transactions.
The resolution will require that the European Commission, Central Bank and member states to reveal their prior knowledge of the program.
The resolution comes on the heels of US reports revealing that President George W. Bush has been using emergency powers to gain access to data concerning suspect transactions over the SWIFT network.
SWIFT has maintained that it responded to subpoenas sent by the US administration calling for SWIFT to turn over limited sets of data, and that it informed both the central bank of Belgium and the European Central Bank of its compliance with the subpoenas.