Thread by @CyrilRitter

1. Good opportunity to look at the SWIFT network and its many links to the history of technology, EU competition law, EU data protection law, and EU foreign policy, sanctions policy, and strategic autonomy @thomasphi2 @competitionprof #antitrust

https://twitter.com/Europe2022FR/status/1498767762562428929

2. SWIFT is an interbank messaging system. It was designed in 1973 to replace telex messages for money transfers. SWIFT defines itself as "closest to a telecom or technology company" and "a neutral utility with a global systemic character"

3. SWIFT HQ is located near Brussels (next to Chateau de la Hulpe, for Brussels people) ft.com/content/9f082a… @mikepeeljourno @jimbrunsden

4. When banks wanted a less error-prone and higher-capacity communication network in the 1970s, First National City Bank (the future Citibank) set up its proprietary standard called MARTI. Banks preferred to join SWIFT, an open standard library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/4…

5. SWIFT also had a difficult relationship with postal and telecom operators (the former "PTTs"). PTTs were competitors of SWIFT in the money order business, potential customers of SWIFT (for their postal banking operations) and provided telecom services to SWIFT

6. "While SWIFT had estimated a cost of 0.70 Belgian francs (BEF) per message, the PTTs imposed a cost of 1.55 BEF per intra-Europe message and 8.40 BEF per transatlantic message". In 1976 SWIFT filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission. It was resolved informally

7. 20 years later the situation was reversed: the European Commission sent a statement of objections to SWIFT alleging that SWIFT was an essential facility and had committed a manifest abuse of dominance by denying access to La Poste. Below the case summary & SWIFT's commitments

8. After resisting efforts by anti-money laundering authorities to access its data in the 1990s, SWIFT accepted to share its data with U.S. intelligence agencies in the aftermath of 9/11. The NYT revealed this in this 2006 article nytimes.com/2006/06/23/was…

9. The cooperation between SWIFT and U.S. intelligence agencies was investigated by the Belgian Data Protection Authority, which accepted SWIFT's commitments in 2008 (Safe Harbor + data localisation) swift.com/insights/press…

10. In 2018 the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called on Europeans to build an alternative to SWIFT in order to be more independent from U.S. sanctions policy handelsblatt.com/english/opinio…

11. But as @stefeich and @esaravalle note in separate articles, SWIFT is ultimately less important than the dollar system
(a) thenation.com/article/archiv…
(b) alchemistmag.com/past-editions/…

12. Finally, the key paper on using "weaponized interdependence", including SWIFT, for sanctions policy direct.mit.edu/isec/article-a… @henryfarrell @anewman_forward

13. In the meantime, the SWIFT sanctions have been published in the EU Official Journal here eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/…