Strasbourg/Brussels, 13/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament, especially its liberal and Greens/EFA groups, is finding itself in an increasingly uncomfortable situation with regard to the European directive on PNR. A few days after the Paris attacks, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, his counterpart at the European Parliament, German Social Democrat, Martin Schulz and the EPP group effectively launched an appeal on Tuesday 13 January in Strasbourg, for all the other groups of the European Parliament to adopt this instrument.
The EP civil liberties committee blocked adoption of the text in April 2013. It argued that this Commission text from February 2012 was not sufficiently justifiable and that its scope was too wide. Donald Tusk said that, “a single European PNR system (rather than 28) is much better for security and freedom. This was true in December (during the European Summit), it is even more the case now.” During a press conference, Martin Shultz said that he was in favour of ratifying the European PNR. In a reference to the vote in November at the EP on referring the EU-Canada agreement on PNR data transfers, the German president explained, “during the most recent European Summit, all the heads of state asked me to address the heads of the political groups; as for me, I was in favour of ratification and I thought that referring it to the European Court of Justice was not the right procedure” to ask it to evaluate its legality in respect of European law. Schulz said that at the present time, “we are already transferring data to Canada; with this agreement, we had a time limit on data storage capacity; I thought this agreement was right and we were successful in getting what we were able to get”.
French UMP MEPs at the EPP called for “an emergency vote” at the EP on the PNR project. The MEPs included the LIBE committee vote of April 2013 on the European PNR, as well as the EP referral of the EU-Canada agreement last November in their press release and argued, “this text was rejected by a coalition of Socialists, Front national, Greens and liberals, particularly in November 2014 but has been consistently supported by the UMP and is now an imperative for protecting our fellow citizens”. These MEPs want the European PNR to be “voted on during the plenary session in the next Strasbourg sitting”. The leader of the German group at the, EPP, Manfred Weber, adopted a more cautious note and argued that “the PNR must arrive at the right destination; citizens who are aware of the dangers would not understand if we did nothing… We must work with the Commission and the appropriate European Commissioner”. One source from the group said that the European PNR question could possibly be on the agenda at the conference of presidents of the groups at the EP on 5 February but added that its success is far from being guaranteed.
Commission says there is no new PNR proposal
Sizeable obstacles are barring the way of the PNR, particularly because ALDE and Greens/EFA, as well as certain MEPs at the S&D, do not want to be forced on this highly sensitive dossier on personal data. On Tuesday, Sophie in 't Veld (ALDE, Netherlands) explained that she was not against a new proposal that respected proportionality and whose need to do so has been appropriately approved in practice. The liberal MEP qualified this statement, however, adding that “two prior conditions must be fulfilled: that the reform of European personal data protection rules is adopted at the Council and that the new PNR proposals respect proportionality”. The ALDE group is against the PNR directive covering innocent travellers. In 't Veld said that these two conditions are “quite modest and simple to meet… Neither do they correspond to a political demand but to what the European Court of Justice said last April when the directive on the retention of personal data was invalidated.” She concluded that it was therefore impossible that “they make us vote again on the same project”.
Speaking on behalf of the S&D, Gianni Pittella, the leader of the group, indicated that he was not against the PNR but that they needed “a clear definition of the data retention objectives”. Sylvie Guillaume (S&D, France), said that it was very important that they did not make matters worse and that it was necessary to obtain balanced texts. The MEP highlighted the fact that the civil liberties committee would be tackling the dossier but that it was still not known when this would take place. She said that quantity should not be a substitute for quality and that she wanted reflections on education, trafficking (such as weapons) and the funding of terrorist action, to take place at the same time.
Although 15 member states, including France, have already voted on a PNR system that allows them to have information on flights in and out of the EU, certain MEPs in ALDE and the Greens, do not see how a European PNR will help when the attacks committed in France were perpetrated by nationals that had not left the territory for some time and were known by the intelligence services.
The EPP considers that the conditions called for by the S&D and ALDE are unjustifiable and Weber added that “we can make progress on the European PNR, without an agreement on the reform” of the 1995 rules. The European Commission does not intend to rewrite the draft directive presented in February 2012, at all. Commissioner Avramopoulos' services indicated that “it is up to the European Parliament to make the amendments it wants”.
There is a glimmer of hope at the EP; the events over recent days could subsequently help speed up the work on data protection, including a regulation and directive, according to one European source on Monday afternoon. EU home affairs ministers will be meeting in Riga at the end of January to fine-tune their response, and an experts' meeting will take place on Wednesday 14 January in Brussels. (SP, CG and JK)