Brussels, 14/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - A new study conducted by legal experts was presented in Strasbourg on Wednesday by MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht (Greens/EFA, Germany). It confirms the doubts of a section of the Parliament over the legitimacy of the new agreement between the EU and the United States on the transfer of information on air passengers, the famous PNR information. Albrecht used the study to continue to voice his opposition to the agreement and to call on the civil liberties committee, which will meet to discuss this issue on 27 March, to reject the accord. At the start of February, the rapporteur on the PNR agreement, Sophie in 't Veld (ALDE, Netherlands), also recommended rejection.
According to the study carried out by Dr Franziska Böhm of the University of Luxembourg and Prof. Dr. Gerrit Hornung of the University of Passau, the new PNR agreement negotiated with Washington offers very few improvements on the previous agreements of 2004 and 2007. It also fails to meet the demands on a number of points set out in May 2010 by the European Parliament (EP), which passed a resolution refusing to extend the 2007 agreement and called on the Commission to negotiate a much tougher agreement in terms of data protection and fundamental rights.
Among the reproaches levelled by the two researchers, Böhm highlighted the extension of the scope of the agreement, no longer limited to terrorism-related or “serious” crime but extending to other objectives, such as border control, and other types of breaches of the law. The extended retention of information (up to ten years for serious crime and 15 for terrorism), anonymisation (after six months), and “masking out” or “repersonalisation” of data also remain very vague and uncertain. The number of categories of information affected by transfers has not been reduced and provisions on sensitive data that can be transferred and analysed have not been improved either, Böhm went on to say.
The new agreement does contain some positive points, however - for example, arrangements for review and oversight of the agreement have been taken more into account this time. Nevertheless, there is still no real independent data protection oversight authority in the United States. Provisions on judicial review are more detailed than in the former agreements, but here, too, reference to U.S. law in force can hardly be deemed to ensure an adequate level of data protection, Böhm said, as it is generally agreed that US laws do not ensure an adequate level of data protection.
The study was welcomed by Albrecht who expressed the view that no progress had been made on any of the points in the EP demands of 2010. At a press conference, he specifically mentioned “profiling”, which has not been removed from the agreement. He went as far as to argue that this agreement presents a fundamental conflict between European standards of data protection and how the Americans conceive of the use of PNR data. He welcomed the fact that a section of the Parliament, MEPs from the ALDE and GUE/NGL Groups and even some German and Austrian EPP MEPs opposed the agreement. As things stand, the outcome of the vote is still hanging in the balance, the S&D Group still not having taken an official position and a number of EPP MEPs having indicated that they will vote against the agreement. Things were easier in the Council - home affairs ministers approved the text on 13 December last year. Germany and Austria abstained, however, unhappy that the information could be retained for so long a period of time. (SP/transl.rt)