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Commission to seek new data-sharing mandates

Commission wants rapid deal with Council and MEPs as the EU expects surge in number of PNR requests.

The European Commission plans to seek new mandates in September to negotiate the conditions that it will apply when providing countries outside the EU with information about airline passengers. Scarred by previous battles with MEPs over international data-sharing, the Commission hopes to win approval from the European Parliament, as well as from the Council of Ministers – thus avoiding the rejections it has suffered since MEPs gained new powers under the Lisbon treaty.

The Commission and national governments want rapid agreement on how to react when security-conscious countries request the individualised passenger data that are stored in European airlines’ reservation systems. The EU expects to receive numerous applications in coming years for this passenger name record (PNR) information, which includes a passenger’s name, contact details, payment method, baggage and seat number, and meal preferences.

Without an EU agreement, airlines might be stripped of foreign landing slots for failing to supply the data, or might seek their own deals with foreign governments that are neglectful of privacy standards. The Commission and member states are keen to avoid any diplomatic spat that might arise with the US if legal certainty is lacking over the supply of PNR data.

Interim agreements

In the most recent case of Parliament dissatisfaction, MEPs in May refused to endorse PNR agreements brokered by the EU with the US and Australia – on the basis of a mandate from the Council – that authorise the transfer of data when people fly to these two countries. The refusal of the Parliament’s consent condemns the two agreements to merely temporary status.

The Parliament objected to what it saw as breaches of fundamental EU principles on data protection, and demanded new agreements that meet “minimum requirements” on data protection. These include a ban on “data mining or profiling”, and assurances that PNR data will not be used to deny boarding, or to investigate or prosecute a passenger. Any PNR agreements with non-EU countries would be rejected unless they adhered to these standards, MEPs threatened.

Intelligence mistakes

The Parliament’s insistence on these rules is intended to prevent any repeat of the intelligence mistakes from over-reliance on PNR, including the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was kidnapped by the US government from New York’s JFK airport and held in Syria for more than a year and tortured, after apparently being mistakenly identified on the basis of his PNR data.

The Commission is seeking authorisation to negotiate new agreements with the US and Australia. It will also present a draft mandate for a similar agreement with Canada, that was to replace a PNR agreement reached in 2005 but that expired in 2009. In an accompanying policy paper, the Commission will set out principles for all future PNR agreements.

Sophia in ’t Veld, a Dutch Liberal MEP who takes the lead on PNR issues in Parliament, said that it was “highly unfortunate” that the Commission had yet to present its PNR package. She said that it was “only a matter of time before it [PNR collection] becomes a worldwide issue” and rigorous data privacy standards were vital.

In February, in its first exercise of its Lisbon treaty powers, the Parliament rejected the EU-US agreement on sharing financial transfer data, again on data privacy grounds.

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