EU-US: agreement on the private data of all Europeans
Towards approval. Ursula Von der Leyen negotiates the agreement with Donald Trump.
Today I am providing my English translation of a short, but very important article by investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi, originally in Italian and published on Il Fatto Quotidiano (paywalled) on Sunday 18th January 2026 and on this post on Giorgio Bianchi’s Telegram channel. (All emphasis mine).
Not just Greenland and Venezuela. [US President] Donald Trump wants to get his hands on the most sensitive data of Italian and European citizens. Police databases containing fingerprints, biometric data and other information would end up in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], the controversial US border police force that has been in the international media spotlight for its brutality after killing Renee Good, an innocent 37-year-old American citizen.
With the exception of privacy advocates, no one seems to know about these negotiations between the EU and the US for the exchange of police databases, which are defined by a bureaucratic acronym that does not say much: Enhanced Border Security Partnership (EBSP). The European authorities themselves admit that the decision to open these negotiations was taken “without discussion”, as reported by Statewatch, a British NGO [Non-Governmental Organization] for the defence of civil rights. And no one knows exactly what data will end up at the Department of Homeland Security. Yet the countdown has begun and the United States aims to have everything finalised by 31st December 2026.
The request for access to police databases was first made in February 2022, during the Biden presidency, and at least initially there was talk of access to biometric data “for immigration control and security procedures”, as revealed by two EU Council documents. Since 2022, the request for access to this data has not only been made to European citizens, but to all 42 countries around the world that are part of the Visa Waiver Programme (VWP), a programme – which includes many EU countries as well as non-EU countries such as the United Kingdom – that allows citizens to travel to the US for up to 90 days for tourism or business without needing an entry visa.
The Biden administration’s demand was already highly problematic, considering that the US does not have the data protection regulations that European citizens enjoy. With Trump’s arrival as US President, however, the EU does not seem to have reconsidered the advisability of handing over its citizens’ sensitive data to the Department of Homeland Security, whose border police have shown that they have no qualms about killing even their own citizens. A document from November 2025, obtained by Statewatch, no longer refers only to an exchange of biometric data, but to “information”, without clarifying what kind. To determine what information will be exchanged between the EU and the US and according to what rules, the European Commission will negotiate a framework agreement with the United States.
Police databases have always been extremely sensitive. As German journalist Matthias Monroy pointed out in a lecture on the subject last December at the Chaos Computer Club in Berlin – a reference point for the galaxy of experts and activists who defend privacy – even among European countries there is no systematic and total access to the police databases that each nation possesses: European countries have some common databases and exchange information for security reasons, but according to well-defined and restricted parameters. Now, however, there is a risk of extending access to the United States on an unprecedented scale. And these negotiations are taking place at a time that is problematic to say the least: while in Italy the Data Protection Authority is overwhelmed by a judicial investigation and in the United States the border police are the subject of fierce criticism for the way they operate, so much so that American professor and commentator for the British newspaper The Guardian, Robert Reich, has described them as “America’s Gestapo”.