Brussels, 24/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - The transfer of air passengers' data - even only within the EU - continues to make waves and once again divided MEPs on the European Parliament's civil liberties committee on Wednesday 24 April. The majority clearly want to reject the European PNR (passenger name records) system. The European Commission made a proposal on the system in February 2011 at the request of member states.
The MEPs approved an amendment (35 votes for, 25 against) stipulating the rejection of the Commission's proposal and they have thus put an early end to voting on the report by Timothy Kirkhope (ECR, United Kingdom). The adoption of this amendment rejecting the European PNR was applauded by those in the meeting room, which did not please Kirkhope or the EPP Group - which has accused the other political groups of not “caring about the fight against terrorism”, as Véronique Matthieu said (EPP, France). As for Kirkhope, he deplored an “irresponsible” vote by the civil liberties committee and deemed that this vote would end up making life easier for terrorists, criminals and other traffickers, by making it more complicated to track them down.
Like the international PNR agreements - including the one with the United States which was adopted by the plenary in April 2012 against the opinion of its rapporteur, Sophie int'Veld (ALDE, Netherlands) - this European PNR proposal initially involved transferring to EU law enforcement authorities data on passengers on flights coming from or destined for third countries - a transfer operated by airlines in order to prevent terrorist acts or particularly serious crimes. EU home affairs ministers at that time accepted the principle of including certain intra-European flights which were considered as extremely dangerous. However, the matter - which was already sensitive due to the issues it raises on the rules of protection of passenger data - was then blocked in June 2012 during a dispute between the European Council and the European Parliament about Schengen governance. Work on this file was then frozen for several months.
On Wednesday morning, MEPs nevertheless clearly showed that they did not at this stage want a PNR proposal for the EU, deeming it ineffective against terrorism and too intrusive for citizens. In the view of the Greens/EFA Group, this is a great success “for the protection of fundamental rights” and for “the rule of law”, as Hélène Flautre said. In her opinion, it would have been a threat to freedom and disproportionate to oblige companies to record passenger data (itinerary, hotel reservation, details on credit cards and other personal information) for at least five years. “The automatic haul (of data) on the sole basis of profiles, without concrete suspicion, and without a court order, could have become the norm”, Flautre adds. In April 2012, the Parliament nevertheless endorsed a period of up to 15 years for holding data in the agreement with the United States.
From ALDE, Sophie int'Veld was more guarded and justified this rejection by the fact that the EU has still not been given its new rules on data protection as the reform of the 1995 directive, dealt with by European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding, is still ongoing. In ALDE's view, the EU PNR proposal does not, as it stands, take account of all the requests put together by the Parliament in 2010. ALDE considers that the proposal raises concerns about its conformity with fundamental rights and disregards the work currently under way on a European directive on data protection. ALDE also considers that any European PNR proposal should be made only after these new rules have been adopted, int'Veld stated - in this case a general regulation and a directive on data protection as part of police and judicial cooperation.
In Kirkhope's view, these arguments are “hypocritical”, and he even called on int'Veld to step down from her position as rapporteur on the future EU-Canada PNR - which she refused to do. “Extremely irritated”, Kirkhope also deplored his report being discreetly shelved as they will have to “wait at least five or six years to have new rules on data protection”. He was able to depend on the support of his EPP colleagues, however, who believed that the Parliament's ruling involves the rejected report coming up again in a plenary session. This rather irritated Judith Sargentini (Greens/EFA), who was shocked to see how they were trying to circumvent the vote. This is democracy - sometimes we lose votes, she told the EPP members.
Cutting the legal wrangling short, the chair of the civil liberties committee, Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar (S&D, Spain) decided to send the file to be examined by the conference of presidents of the Parliament's groups, which will thus decide its fate (our translation throughout). (SP/transl.fl)