Following today's Commission adoption of a directive on the use of Passenger Name Record data within the EU (EU PNR) which aims at strengthening protection of personal data and other fundamental rights, ALDE MEP Sophie IN'T VELD (D66, Netherlands) who has led the Parliament in the examination of the various air passenger data agreements between the EU and third countries said:"The new proposals of the Commission show that it has taken the criticisms of the European Parliament to heart. We will closely scrutinise the proposals, but at first glance there is a substantial improvement compared to the previous proposals."

Indeed, the current Commission draft directive proposes, among others things, a reduced period for retaining data up to 30 days, instead of the previously proposed 10-13 years. It more stringently narrows the purpose of the proposal to fight against terrorism and serious crimes, therefore "sensitive data", like sexual or religious orientation cannot be transferred or processed. Moreover it sets the obligation to inform passengers whose PNR data might have been transferred.

"However, the need for a better justification of the necessity of collection PNR data remains. We need more evidence that the use of PNR data complies with the guiding principles of necessity and proportionality. Parliament needs the facts and figures in order to be able to take a well founded decision." she concluded.

ALDE MEP Sarah LUDFORD (Liberal Democrat, UK) said "Commissioner Malmstrom has done a good job in tightening up the proposed conditions for an EU scheme to collect airline passengers' data, such as length of storage time. But MEPs will still need to subject this to detailed scrutiny in order to see if the way police and border authorities can use the data is too wide in scope, for instance in applying to crimes  which are not the most serious. But another issue that arises is how the EU could allow the US to apply laxer privacy safeguards to the information of EU citizens flying the Atlantic than to Americans' data, which is what is being proposed."