Brussels, 14/05/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 14 May, Françoise Castex MEP (S&D, France) welcomed the European Commission's response confirming some of her concerns about the application of the PNR agreement with the US. The French socialist sent Commissioner Cecilia Malmström a written question on 11 April in which she expressed her concerns about the ways in which the personal data of Europeans was being used by the Department for Homeland Security (DHS), which “does not have a register indicating who has had access to what”. It would therefore be impossible to verify the activities of the DHS, particularly because the latter is not legally accountable under US law on the protection of private life. The MEP also indicated that the DHS would be able to bypass provisions in the agreement by requesting access for US offices from European tour operators and therefore recording, for example the intra-Community journeys made by European nationals. By adopting these procedures, the US government would subsequently breach provisions in the 95/46/EC directive on personal data protection.
These concerns have partly been taken up by Malmström, who confirmed on 14 May in a response to the MEP, the existence of a number of malfunctions. In her answer, the commissioner highlighted the repeated “mode pull” requests made, on the initiative of the DHS, despite the fact that a “push” rule exists, which consists of data transfers being made on the initiative of the airline in question. This concern had already been raised in 2010 when the Commission called on the US to “substantially reduce” this kind of request. The Swedish commissioner intends to re-examine these points in the next report on how the agreement is functioning, which is expected out this year. Castex said that, “such uncertainties on a subject as important as the personal data of Europeans are unacceptable”. The Socialist MEP is hoping that the examination of the PNR agreement implementation becomes an indispensable preliminary to the launch of free trade treaty (TTIP) negotiations. (SP/trans.fl)