On Thursday, the Parliament voted on a new agreement on the transfer of EU air passengers’ personal data to the US authorities. The deal sets legal conditions and covers issues such as storage periods, use, data protection safeguards and administrative and judicial redress, and replaces a provisional deal in place since 2007.
The EU-US Passenger Name Record (PNR) agreement was adopted with 409 votes in favour, 226 against and 33 abstentions, with two-thirds of the ALDE MEPs taking part voting against due to concerns over data protection safeguards, including rapporteur Sophie in’T Veld (D’66, Netherlands, ALDE), who withdrew her name from the report. A proposal to refer the agreement to the European Court of Justice was rejected by MEPs.
Whilst Labour and Conservative MEPs voted for the agreement without much agonising, Liberal Democrats were torn between a pragmatic acceptance that the best possible deal had been reached, as Sarah Ludford admitted;
“This agreement is not perfect. But it’s a great deal better than the existing framework and, crucially, than any of the alternatives. There is no chance of the US improving their offer.
If MEPs reject this deal it creates legal uncertainty, deprives us of any platform on which to build a better agreement, and leaves the field open to weaker bilateral accords which the EU will not be able to control.
and concerns over the scale of access by US officials, as Andrew Duff noted on Twitter;
#PNR debate on #EP. @MalmstromEU makes good case for a bad deal but without dispelling fears about loose scope @SophieintVeld
Under the terms of the agreement, personal data held by airlines on passengers travelling to and from the United States must made available to the US Department of Homeland Security, who will keep PNR data in an active database for as long as five years, although all information which could be used to identify a passenger would be “depersonalized” after six months.
After that, the data will be moved to a “dormant database” for up to 10 years, with stricter access requirements for US officials, when it would be fully “anonymized” by deleting all information which could serve to identify the passenger.
For the record, the main British delegations voted as follows;
Conservatives – 22-0 in favour
Labour – 12-0 in favour
Liberal Democrats – 5-4 against, with 2 abstentions
UKIP – 7-0 against
For full details of individual MEP votes, visit VoteWatch.eu
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7 Comments
Is this another of those agreements like extradition, where we give them more than they give us?
Kevin, I think you can take that to be a racing certainty…
What happened to the 12th Lib Dem MEP? Didn’t show up at all?
Interesting that (according to the analysis on votewatch.eu) the UKIP position against the agreement is in defiance of its party group line. Mind you, I suppose that a group that defines itself primarily by opposition to the EU could not be expected to have a coherent position on bread and butter issues. Still it is a pity that come the 2014 EP election UKIP can claim to have opposed the agreement as a group, while the Lib Dems in the UK cannot.
On the subject of personal data…
out of curiosity: anyone else getting a banner advert above this thread about “what you can do to avoid wildfires in the US’?
I can’t think it’s connect to my search history, though the two smaller ads on the page clearly are.
So should people who are “against this sort of thing” vote UKIP in future?
@YG: Correct: Edward McMIllan-Scott was not present for the vote.
@Chris: Green/EFA MEPs (in UK, Greens and Celtic nationalists) also all voted against this, and are certainly more reliable defenders of civil liberties than UKIP…