Tomorrow, Tuesday 6th November the Commission is due to approve a package of proposals to strengthen the measures in the fight against terrorism, including a European version of the EU-US Passenger Name Record agreement. Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament reiterate their deep concerns over the introduction of any new measures affecting data privacy without proper and transparent impact assessments on their effectiveness.

Sophie In't Veld (D66, Netherlands) and EP rapporteur on PNR issues for the committee on Justice and Civil Liberties issued today a strong warning to the Commission not to ride roughshod over civil liberties in its pursuit of terrorists.

" We should not be compounding the mistakes of the July PNR agreement with the US  by introducing our own - at least until there is serious and irrefutable proof that such mass exchange of personal data is resulting in the arrest of terrorists."

"I remain adamant that PNR data should not be used as an indiscriminate form of data profiling. But evidence points to the contrary as the US authorities are still able to "pull" all sorts of information from EU carriers' databases without prior permission and without adequate safeguards on the end users or length of data retention."

"It is disingenuous of the Commission to tell us in July that they fought to resist US demands for an intrusive system only to propose a similar system themselves 4 months later."

"These proposals will bypass parliamentary scrutiny and judicial oversight and only a secret committee will evaluate their effectiveness."

"Proponents of the measures may claim that they make the world a safer place but they fail to disclose the evidence that this is the case nor point out the price to our fundamental freedoms. We should not forget that it is not only lives that we are trying to protect from terrorists but our democracy too."