Liberals and Democrats remain concerned at the potential infringement of civil liberties posed by widespread and rushed installation of body scanners at airports around the EU.

Gesine Meissner (FDP, Germany), ALDE coordinator for the Transport committee said: "This is an on- going debate. Body scanners are just one of the solutions that still need to be proven to fully respect human rights, especially dignity and privacy and human health. For the moment there is no convincing evidence that body scanners will provide more security than we have right now.
We'll wait to assess the forthcoming European Commission report, promised in spring, to also ensure that the unilateral Member States' initiatives have complied with these concerns and to guarantee common European rules in civil aviation security. The importance of an EU-wide solution must be underlined for this and any future security arrangements."

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert (VVD, Netherlands), ALDE coordinator for the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee said: "Actually it is not all that difficult. EU endorsement of body scanners should go hand in hand with the endorsement of the well-known data protection safeguards, to be applied in all Member States. Citizens must be able to have trust in both, security and data privacy claims. Getting it right the first time around should be the objective. The second generation body scanners are promising in that respect and could be an alternative to hand searches."

"Though, it should be clear that body scanners are just one instrument at the end of a very long security line.  At all times effective cooperation of Intelligence and Investigation services should be the number one priority. The Detroit case was largely a US mistake that held all the information but failed to connect the dots and hence to prevent this attempt." Hennis-Plasschaert added.