Brussels, 10/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - After more than four years of discussions and theatricals, the committee on civil liberties of the EP (LIBE) on Thursday 10 December finally gave its blessing to the draft directive on the collection of European air passengers' data to fight terrorism and organised crime, or European 'PNR'. By 38 votes in favour, 19 against and two abstentions, the MEP approved the compromise struck on 2 December by the negotiators of the EP and the Council of the EU, and which the home affairs ministers of the EU themselves adopted on 4 December (see EUROPE 11446).
“I welcome this vote”, was the reaction of British rapporteur Timothy Kirkhope (ECR), who added that it was “high time” for this to happen. Essentially, the EP and the Council have still formally to adopt the draft in January and the European PNR must then be transposed within two years. The collection system may be up and running earlier, as the Commission has already helped 17 member states to set in place a system for the collection of PNR data, but the reporter said that he did not recommend this option, which could lead to different levels of protection between the 28 during the transposition period of the directive.
In any case, this vote of the LIBE committee is a victory for the home affairs ministers, who had stepped up their pressure on the EP following the Paris attacks of 13 November, and for the EPP group, which had been calling for the adoption of this directive, which was presented in 2011, but was rejected by the LIBE committee for the first time in April 2013. Axel Voss (EPP, Germany) said that the adoption of the European PNR would help to keep Europeans safer and help to thwart further terrorist attacks, he reacted in a press release in which he again hit out at the Socialist and Liberal groups, which he feels are guilty of having held up the dossier.
In fact, opposition remained strong within the committee right to the very end, but particularly among the Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups, with all members of these two groups voting against the text. Within the ALDE group, only Sophie in 't Veld (Netherlands) ended up voting against, with the rest of the troops, particularly the French members, supporting the compromise reached. In the S&D group, on the other hand, the divisions remained clear for all to see, with five Social Democrat MEPs voting against the text, among them Germany's Birgit Sippel. All of the French members, on the other hand, rallied to the calls of the French government and voted for the European PNR.
Opponents of the European PNR, and the Greens/EFA in particular, feel that the compromise reached with the Council does not resolve the questions raised by the Court of Justice of the EU on mass surveillance by stealth and, in particular, does not respond to the 2014 cancellation of the directive on the retention of telecommunications data or to the problems raised by Edward Snowden. “With issues related to mass surveillance and exposed by the European Parliament in 2013 remaining unchanged, the MEPs have decided to ignore them, along with the ruling of the European Court of Justice overturning the directive on the retention of data”, MEPs from the group reacted in a press release. The Greens/EFA will propose amendments to improve the text before its adoption in plenary, they add, “amongst other things, to reduce the period for which personal information can be held and its scope, which will be limited only to passengers from destinations which may be considered a risk to collective security”.
The European Data Protection Controller (EDPC) also voiced criticism, saying that a European PNR would be tantamount to collecting data from millions of passengers not under any suspicion, which would be the first tool of across-the-board, large-scale data collection in the EU. These words came as a surprise to Kirkhope on Thursday morning, as the rapporteur had said that the EDPC had been regularly “consulted and all of a sudden we hear this declaration, which has nothing to do with the content of the agreement”.
The agreement approved on Thursday by the LIBE MEPs consists of obliging airlines to transmit the data of their passengers (such as travel dates, itinerary, ticketing information, contact details, baggage information, payment information, etc.) in order to help the authorities to fight terrorism and organised crime. On 4 December, the ministers decided that the system could be extended to intra-European flights and charter flights. Under the compromise of 2 December, the data collected will be kept in unmasked form for six months and then in mass form - but remaining accessible to the authorities in the event of specific requests - for a further four of five years. The total retention period will thus be five years.
The PNR data “may be used only for the prevention and detection of terrorist crimes and serious crimes, as well as investigations and proceedings in this field”. A single list of crimes has been established, including the trafficking in human beings, involvement in a criminal organisation, cyber-crime, child pornography and the trafficking in weapons, ammunition and explosives.
As regards the provisions on data protection, the MEPs secured the obligation for the national intelligence units on passengers to appoint a data protection officer responsible for checking the treatment of PNR data, implementing corresponding guarantees and ensuring that access to all PNR data is covered by extremely rigourous conditions after the six-month period. The passengers in question must also be clearly informed of how their data are collected and of their rights.
Finally, a review clause stipulates that the text may be revised two years after its transposition. The Commission must ensure “respect for personal data protection standards, the requirement and proportionality of the collection and treatment of data for each of the listed objectives”, the EP explains in a press release, such as the data retention period and the “effectiveness of the sharing of data between member states”. On this final point, the compromise does not refer to any obligatory exchange between the 28 member states, but just to an exchange of the most relevant information on a suspect traveller, for instance.
Timothy Kirkhope feels that an automatic exchange of data of this kind would have been “disproportionate”, he said on Thursday, obliging countries to exchange information on all passengers with no prior analysis. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)