EU Member States will be asked on 21 April to recognise the usefulness and added value of international agreements on the transfer of air passenger name records (PNR), in particular those concluded with Australia and the United States, which were the subject of a positive evaluation report by the Commission earlier this year.
They will discuss draft EU Council conclusions on the subject in a working group, according to a document seen by EUROPE, and are expected to stress that these two international PNR agreements constitute a “unique dataset” essential “to prevent the return of foreign terrorist fighters and to combat, in particular, drug crimes and child exploitation”.
Exchanges of PNR data with these partner countries “remain key for ensuring our common public security”, says the draft text. And the Commission’s two evaluations have “demonstrated the added value and operational effectiveness” of these PNR agreements. The EU Council could also recognise the efforts of both countries to comply with the provisions of the agreement, in particular on the protection of personal data.
However, the text acknowledges that, “despite the numerous safeguards” present, some aspects of these two agreements are not fully in line with the July 2017 Court of Justice opinion that led to the invalidation of the draft PNR agreement with Canada. And this is precisely what the European Parliament is criticising these two agreements for, with some elected representatives believing that they have become illegal since the Court’s ruling on the EU-Canada agreement.
These MEPs made this known to the Commission on 23 March, during a debate in the Committee on Civil Liberties on the functioning of these two international agreements. The Commission had also indicated that improvements needed to be made to the arrangements with Australia, particularly with regard to transfers to non-Member States and the number of agents with access to PNR data (see EUROPE 12684/12).
The draft conclusions encourage the Commission to address these shortcomings. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)