Europe may suspend data-sharing agreements with the United States if American policy makers do not improve how Europeans’ online information is protected, according to Andrus Ansip, the nominee to lead Europe’s digital agenda.
His statements could have major implications for American tech giants like Google and Facebook, which routinely compile data generated by their European customers through web searches and other online activities. Those companies’ data policies have come under greater scrutiny in Europe in the wake of the revelations about spying by the National Security Agency, using online data.
Mr. Ansip, 58, said that the United States still had to convince European lawmakers that it took a hard line on data protection.
“Americans have to deliver and provide real trust to European citizens,” Mr. Ansip, a former prime minister of Estonia, said during a three-hour hearing in Brussels on Monday.
In reference to the so-called safe harbor agreement between Europe and the United States, which allows American tech companies to move Europeans’ data to America as long as the companies uphold the same privacy rules, he added: “If we don’t get clear answers, suspension has to stay as an option.”
Mr. Ansip’s comments follow similar warnings by other European politicians, who have criticized the United States for taking a relatively lax approach to online privacy. In response, American officials, particularly those at the Federal Trade Commission who oversee the safe harbor agreement, say they regularly fine companies that flout the rules.
The public hearing on Monday was part of two weeks of questions at the European Parliament in which lawmakers have questioned the prospective new members of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union that will start work on Nov. 1.
If he becomes chief of Europe’s digital agenda, Mr. Ansip — who led Estonia, one of the world’s most digitally advanced countries, for nearly a decade — will most likely have to tackle reforms of the Continent’s privacy rules and efforts to build digital collaboration across the 28-member bloc.
He would also be in charge of completing an overhaul of Europe’s digital rules — call the Connected Continent proposals — that are aimed at creating one single digital market across the European Union. These are expected to be completed early next year.
During the lengthy hearing on Monday, Mr. Ansip regularly emphasized that the protection of people’s online data was his most important goal.
“We have to protect everyone’s privacy,” he said. “Trust is a basic principle. If people can’t trust e-services, they will never use them.”
As part of this online privacy push, Mr. Ansip said he backed efforts by some European politicians to create a so-called charter of Internet rights, a legally binding document that would outline people’s digital freedoms. A similar law was recently passed in Brazil.
The proposed new European commissioner also supported plans to impose so-called net neutrality rules, which are based on the principle that everyone should have equal access to online content. Local lawmakers recently passed legislation proposing that no company could charge for better access to their networks.
But in a slight opening for European telecommunications and broadband operators, which would like to charge more for improved Internet access, Mr. Ansip said that they could offer different services as long as basic Internet access was not affected.
“Higher prices for higher speeds are acceptable, but not at the price of others,” he said.
For a politician whose own country won independence from the Soviet Union only in the early 1990s, Mr. Ansip took a somewhat hard line on efforts to control how information was spread online.
In response to questions about Europe’s so-called right to be forgotten, which allows people to ask search engines like Google to remove links to online information about them, he said keeping information public was important.
“The right to be forgotten has to stay as an exception,” Mr. Ansip said.