Brussels, 24/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - European airlines are proposing a system for the storage of data on transatlantic flight passengers, in order to resolve the conflict between the EU and the United States on the protection of personal data (see yesterday's EUROPE).
In a letter to Commissioner Bolkestein, the Association of European Airlines (AEA) is asking for a proposal put forward by the Austrian personal data protection body to be studied carefully. Under this proposal, data provided by airlines will be transferred "to a high-security storage site, under the control of European governments, where they can be filtered by national authorities, in accordance with bilateral or international agreements", indicated the AEA in a press release. This kind of solution would facilitate an agreement between the EU and the United States, and could be set up within six months, the airlines believe. The condition is that there lust really be an EU/US agreement on this point, a legal basis to set up a central data storage system and the state funding of this storage, they specify.