Brussels, 24/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - On 24 February, Timothy Kirkhope (ECR, UK) published a new draft report on the 'European PNR' or passenger name record, which will be debated by the civil liberties committee of the European Parliament this Thursday, 26 February.
In his text, the rapporteur takes on board the concerns of the MEPs regarding the legitimacy of the project and the provisions on the protection of personal data, whilst addressing the requirements of the member states. Amongst other things, he attempts to reduce the scope of application of cases for which the data in question will be processed and may be kept (e.g. terrorism, trafficking in human beings, child pornography, weapons trafficking, etc) and calls for minor infringements to be excluded. He takes up the changes suggested by the Commission, such as guaranteeing that sensitive data will be deleted after 30 days, or that access to PNR records will continue to be authorised for five years in the case of terrorism, but reduced to four years in the case of other serious crimes. Additionally, each country would appoint a data protection monitor within the processing units.
On the other hand, the rapporteur has kept in a number of potentially divisive amendments, such as the fact that the European PNR may apply to all intra-European flights, as well as flights from and to third countries. The Commission is opposed to including intra-European flights, but the Council opened the door to this possibility on a voluntary basis, in its common position of 2012.
In early February, the EPP, ALDE, S&D, ECR and EFDD groups made a commitment to conclude the European PNR by the end of this year (see EUROPE 11251). This commitment, a gesture of concession to the member states, comes with conditions. The EP is calling for negotiations to be held in parallel on the reform of the data protection rules, which has been on the table of the Council since January 2012. (Solenn Paulic)