Brussels, 05/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - The informal meeting at the end of the afternoon on Wednesday 4 February on the plan for a European passenger name record (PNR) - a meeting between the European Parliament's rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs, national experts and European Commission representatives - “was essentially technical” and “non-political”, the assistants of rapporteur Timothy Kirkhope (ECR, UK) stated on Thursday 5 February.
The meeting did not enable an agreement to be found on the way forward on European PNR. Indeed this issue has been blocked in the Parliament's civil liberties committee since 2013 and its outcome remains subject to the positions that the S&D group, in particular, will take. The ALDE group is divided on the issue, but could fall in behind the S&D if the S&D decided to resume work on the proposal for a directive that was put forward in February 2011, sources state. The Greens/EFA group told press again on Wednesday that it was opposed to a European PNR and that it preferred mechanisms that simply targeted individual suspects. Claude Moraes (S&D, UK) met the head of the French Senate, Gérard Larcher, in Brussels on 5 February in order to continue discussions on the European PNR.
Kirkhope is currently still due to present his draft revised report by the end of the month, but this does not yet feature officially on the agenda of the civil liberties committee.
Opinion of the Article 29 party. The Article 29 working party (comprising representatives from the national data protection authorities) issued an opinion on 5 February regarding this draft on recording European air passengers. The working party's opinion was based on a previous 2010 analysis of PNR systems in general and stated that the extent and indiscriminate nature of the European PNR for the fight against terrorism and serious crime was likely seriously to undermine the right of all passengers to the protection of private life and personal data.
The Article 29 working party states that in principle it is not “in favour of or opposed to PNR data collection schemes”. However, such an interference with fundamental rights would be permissible only if its necessity was to be demonstrated and the principle of proportionality respected. If this should be the case for the European PNR, it would then be a matter of providing sufficient data protection safeguards. The national authorities say they are ready to engage constructively in the debate on the European PNR so as to ensure its compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a press release from the Article 29 working party states. (SP)