Brussels, 13/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament civil liberties (LIBE) committee will vote late on Wednesday 15 July on the draft report by Timothy Kirkhope (ECR, UK) on the European passenger name records (PNR) proposal relating to the retention of information on air passengers. Voting is expected to take two hours.
The proposal, again thrust centre stage after the terrorist attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014 and the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen in January of this year, was presented by the European Commission in February 2011 but was voted down initially by the LIBE committee in April 2013 before Parliament, in plenary session, voted to give the directive a second chance.
Over 900 amendments have been put down to Kirkhope's report and he has been involved in a hectic series of meetings before the date of 15 July in an effort to find compromises. How the vote will go remains, however, “difficult to predict”, a Parliament source has revealed, such are the sensitivities on the issue of the rights of the individual. Surprises cannot be ruled out.
The proposal on a European PNR, to tackle terrorism and serious crime, has been heavily criticised as being intrusive and because of the potential breaches of individual rights. While the Greens/EFA are fiercely opposed to this type of instrument and, in general, to any measure that may be equated with mass surveillance, the other political forces (EPP, S&D, ALDE, ECR and EFDD) have pledged, in a joint resolution in February 2015, to seal agreement on the European PNR on condition that the Council, at the same time, takes forward work to reform personal data protection.
The outcome of Wednesday's vote will be determined by these respective red lines, with the S&D and ALDE being particularly attentive to safeguards introduced. The issues to be agreed are many: the length of time the data should be retained, with groups varying between 30 days and 7 years; whether all international and internal European, or even domestic, flights should be covered by this mechanism; the crimes that should be covered by the system, with some groups wanting the PNR to be restricted to terrorism alone and the rapporteur and other groups seeking to extend it to human trafficking and child pornography.
MEPs are expected to demand that information exchange between the member states and with Europol must work well after the terrorist attacks at the start of 2015 highlighted weaknesses in cooperation between European intelligence services. (Solenn Paulic)