Split over airline passenger data-sharing

The European Parliament will have the chance to vote on giving European counter-terrorism officials access to data about airline passengers, just two months after the proposal was rejected by the Parliament’s civil liberties committee.

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The committee was split between centre-right backers of the proposal and opponents from the centre-left, Liberals and Greens. Thirty MEPs voted against the European Commission’s proposal, with 25 in favour. But Timothy Kirkhope, a British Conservative member of the committee who is in charge of the draft legislation, pledged to bring the proposal to a plenary vote anyway.

“Once we get into that forum I think we will get a more objective approach and a better outcome,” he said after the committee vote.

A plenary vote next week (12 July) was made possible only by a member-state agreement to allow MEPs a vote on reform of the EU’s Schengen area (see above). Several MEPs, including Sophie In ‘t Veld, a Dutch Liberal, had sought to delay a vote until the overhaul of the EU’s data-protection regime is complete.

The plenary vote is expected to be close, as the political groups have maintained their positions since the committee vote.

US agreement

Airlines operating between the European Union and the United States have been collecting passenger data – including passengers’ names, addresses and credit card details – and passing them on to the US authorities since last year, when an EU-US agreement took effect. But such information is not available for flights between EU member states. Several member states are preparing legislation to allow national authorities to use intra-EU passenger data.