Malmström praises new PNR deal

According to EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, the new EU-US Passenger Name Record (PNR) agreement represents a “huge improvement” over its predecessor. PNR includes addresses, phone-numbers and credit-card information of flight passengers. Malmström highlighted that the deal “is much clearer in scope and improves on the retention time and the rights of passengers to be informed and have information corrected.” Last week, she had announced the conclusion of the agreement between EU and US authorities after a year of “very difficult” negotiations. The deal must now be approved by a weighted majority of national parliaments and the European Parliament (EP). Referring to major concerns of the EP with the 2007 PNR agreement, the Commissioner called upon MEPs to embrace it. The Liberal Democrats, however, keep expressing their concerns about the “ambiguous” provisions of the deal. Sophie in ‘t Veld, Dutch Liberal MEP, said that her group would only finalise its position on the agreement after consulting legal experts and the European data-protection supervisor: “It’s now almost nine years [since the US began collecting PNR] and we still don’t have a document that is clear and unambiguous and that we can wholeheartedly support.”

The new agreement requires the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to share the data it receives as well as the outcome of its analysis with European law enforcement authorities. Moreover, the data must be made anonymous after a period of six months. Under the PNR deal, the total data retention period is decreased from 15 to 10 years in case of serious transnational crime. The governments of Germany and France have also expressed their concerns about the deal as they fear it will be struck down by their national courts over privacy implications.

The SDA recently published "On the future sharing of PNR" by John Cohen, Principal Deputy Counterterrorism Coordinator at DHS and Senior Advisor to Homeland Secretary Napolitano.