Brussels, 04/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 4 December, the European home affairs ministers reached an agreement in principle on the result of the negotiations carried out with the European Parliament regarding the directive introducing a system for the collection of European passenger data ('European PNR'), for the purposes of fighting terrorism and organised crime (see EUROPE 11445).
They adopted the compromise reached at the negotiating session of 2 December and made several concessions to the European Parliament, particularly on the retention period for unmasked data, in the hope that the institution will be able to accept the agreement.
The Luxembourg minister responsible for the dossier, Etienne Schneider, said that the member states are “moving towards a common goal of adopting an effective PNR which fully respects the fundamental rights”, welcoming an agreement at the Council reached “after four years of discussions”.
On the basis of the most recent round of negotiations with the EP, the member states secured a number of points, such as the inclusion of intra-European flights in the scope of agreement of the text, but on a voluntary basis. The notion of transnational crimes for the scope of application of the directive will be abandoned.
Under pressure from France, the ministers decided to go further, by means of a political declaration (non-binding). They announced that all of the member states would apply the PNR directive to intra-European flights. They also said that charter flights would be covered by the future directive, even though this was not explicitly laid down in the compromise with the EP.
In order to meet the EP's demands, the ministers agreed for the period for which data will be held in unmasked form will be reduced to 6 months, from the initial requirements of the Council and France, which spoke of a period of 9 to 12 months. The data will then be held for four and a half years in a so-called 'masked' form, but the unmasking procedures will also be facilitated in the event that the authorities require access to specific data. The facilitation of the 'unmasking' process (by means of specific technical procedures) is reported to have convinced the ministers to give in over the period of six months, one source explained.
No automatic exchange of data
Although this stage appears to be the final one for the Council, the Parliament has not yet formally adopted the most recent compromise on the table. In terms of logistics, the vote at the EP will take place at the civil liberties committee in Strasbourg on 10 December, then will subsequently be confirmed in a plenary session at the beginning of January.
The fly in the ointment is that the leaders of the EPP, S&D and ALDE groups have set the Council an ultimatum, stipulating that they will reject the text if there is no obligation for the systematic exchange of the data collected.
As adopted by the ministers on Friday, however, the compromise still makes no provision for a systematic exchange obligation, only for the most relevant data, for instance if a suspect individual has been apprehended by any given service. Schneider confirmed that the obligation to share all information was not really to the liking of the member states, which have “various reasons not to want to do this”. “There may be no automatic exchange, but there is retention for six months”, he observed. In the view of the Council, this provision is a major concession to the EP and likely to win the three groups over.
According to an EPP group source, Manfred Weber supports this latest compromise. British Conservative member Timothy Kirkhope, rapporteur of the Parliament, welcomed this signal sent out by the Council, calling on the members of the civil liberties committee to approve the compromise. “We cannot wait any longer to set this system in place”, he stressed, describing the agreement as balanced. Within ALDE, cutting the period for unmasked data to be held to 6 months may also get some of the Liberals behind the text, although members such as Sophie in 't Veld of the Netherlands are expected to continue to reject it. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)