Brussels, 11/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - MEPS on the civil liberties committee at the European Parliament expressed their great concern in Strasbourg on Monday evening 10 June regarding the demands made by Moscow for a passenger name record (PNR) system to be imposed on European airlines as of 1 July. In order to operate over Russian territory, the airlines would be under an obligation to transfer passenger data to Moscow.
MEPs feared this could set a precedent for other countries to follow suit. Some suggested to the commissioner in charge, Cecilia Malmström, who attended the debate, that the planned review of the current visa facilitation deal with Russia could be used as “leverage” to counter Russia's decree. The European executive had already made the same proposal, with a view to putting pressure on Moscow when reviewing the 2007 facilitation agreements. Malmström also criticised the lack of information given to Europeans. The Russian decree dates back to July 2012 and applies to over-flight of Russian territory. “They told us nothing. We have discovered it all for ourselves”, said Malmström, who did, however, give the MEPs one piece of good news - the technical difficulties currently encountered by the Russian authorities for setting their PNR system in place mean that the system will not be operational on 1 July 2013. However, Malmström said “we must be certain that the provision will be suspended until we have obtained the necessary information”. A bilateral meeting at technical level is planned for next week to discuss this subject, the commissioner said.
Sophia In't Veld (ALDE, Netherlands) says no solution has yet been found to the problem as the Commission has, to date, not said how it plans to answer the countries that wish to negotiate PNR agreements with it. For now, only three international agreements have been negotiated: with the United States, Canada and Australia. In't Veld said, moreover, that the Commission had already refused such an agreement with Qatar and, for now, added Malmström, it does not intend to negotiate such a programme with Russia. That, Malmström said, is “not on the agenda”. (SP/transl.jl)