EU plan to share data with US border force sparks surveillance fears
POLITICO - Monday, February 2, 2026BRUSSELS — The European Union is pressing ahead with talks to grant United States border authorities unprecedented access to Europeans’ data, despite growing concerns about American surveillance.
The European Commission is brokering a deal to exchange information about travelers, including fingerprints and law enforcement records, so the U.S. can determine if they “pose a risk to public security or public order,” according to official documents.
Commission officials flew to Washington last week for the first round of negotiations, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The Trump administration’s request for deeper access comes after the U.S. border agency in December proposed reviewing five years of social media history. Talks are happening as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) service is under heavy scrutiny for its use of surveillance technology against protesters in cities such as Minneapolis.
The negotiations should be “put on hold” until the security and privacy of citizens in the EU and U.S. can be guaranteed, liberal European Parliament member Raquel García Hermida-van der Walle said in an interview.
Romain Lanneau, a legal researcher with surveillance watchdog Statewatch, said police databases in Europe could contain information on anyone from protesters to journalists who might be considered a “threat,” and that — under the deal being discussed — this information would be at the fingertips of U.S. border authorities who could refuse those people entry to the United States or even detain them.
European regulators are “very cautiously looking at what’s happening in the United States,” Wojciech Wiewiórowski, the EU’s in-house data protection supervisor, told POLITICO. Europe “has to be careful” about how it allows the data of Europeans to flow to the U.S., he said.
Hermida-van der Walle in January co-signed a letter by six prominent lawmakers calling on the Commission to stand down given the “current geopolitical context,” despite Washington’s admonition that failure to reach a deal will mean Europeans lose access to its visa waiver program.
Unprecedented access
The U.S. is seeking access to information including biometric data such as fingerprints that is stored on national databases in European countries, according to an explanatory note sent to national experts. The data would be used to “address irregular migration and to prevent, detect, and combat serious crime and terrorist offences,” the note said.
In an earlier opinion on the deal, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) — a watchdog that advises the Commission on privacy policies — noted the deal would be the first of its kind to enable “large-scale sharing of personal data … for the purpose of border and immigration control” with a non-EU country.
The Commission would negotiate a framework deal that would serve as a template for bilateral agreements called Enhanced Border Security Partnerships (EBSPs), which national governments agree with Washington. EU countries in December signed off on the Commission’s request to start talks with the U.S.
Washington is pressuring its EU counterparts by imposing a deadline for the bilateral deals to be agreed by the end of 2026. If countries fail to reach a deal with the U.S. they risk being cut from the latter’s visa waiver program. The U.S has made it mandatory for all countries that are part of the visa waiver program to have an EBSP in place.
“The pressure which the United States is extorting on our member states, the threats that if you don’t agree with this we will cancel your access to the visa waiver program, that is an element of blackmail that we cannot let go,” Hermida-van der Walle said.
The EDPS watchdog has cautioned that the scope of data sharing should be as narrow as possible, with clear justifications for every query; transparency around how the data is used; and judicial redress available in the U.S. for any person.
Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert emphasised at a recent press briefing that the framework being negotiated will involve “clear and robust safeguards on data protection,” and will ensure “a non-systematic nature of the information exchange and that the exchange is limited to what is strictly necessary to achieve the objectives of this cooperation.”
US privacy under pressure
Access to the data is the latest issue putting pressure on a troubled relationship between the U.S. and the EU on data privacy.
Since whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed U.S. mass surveillance practices affecting Europeans, the EU has tightened controls on how Washington handles Europeans’ data.
Since the return of Donald Trump as president last year, officials and rights groups have deplored a move by the U.S. administration to gut a key privacy watchdog tasked with overseeing privacy safeguards in place to protect Europeans.
The Trump administration has also been ramping up mass surveillance of citizens by federal agencies like ICE, including through contracts with Israeli spyware company Paragon, surveillance giant Palantir and other firms.
Capgemini, a prominent French IT firm, on Sunday said it was selling off its American activities after it faced political backlash from the French government that its software was being used by ICE authorities.
Civil rights groups, lawmakers and other watchdogs fear the new EU-U.S. data sharing deals would add to backsliding on privacy rights.
“The current initiatives are being presented as toward counter-terrorism, but a lot of them are actually adopted for the chilling effect [on political activism],” Statewatch’s Lanneau said.
Hermida-van der Walle, the liberal lawmaker, warned: “If people have to go to the United States, if it’s not a choice but something that they have do, there is a risk of self-censoring.”
“This comes from an administration who claims to be the biggest defender of free speech. What they’re doing with their actions is curtailing the possibility of people to express themselves freely, because otherwise they might not get access into the country,” she said.