Scheme will allow security services easier access to information about people flying into and out of Europe

Security services will have easier access to information about people flying into and out of Europe, after MEPs voted in favour of a mass data collection plan aimed at combating terrorists and organised criminals.

The European parliament voted by 461 to 179 to share passenger name records (PNR), a measure that has been five years in the making and the subject of a rancorous debate on how to balance security against privacy. Only nine MEPs abstained, in a sign of the sharp polarisation over the plans.



France’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said it was an essential step in the fight against terrorism in Europe. France led attempts to revive the long-stalled PNR plans in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, and stepped up its efforts after the attacks in Paris and Brussels.

Critics said PNR was a placebo at best and claimed it would divert resources from targeted surveillance of criminal suspects.

Timothy Kirkhope, a British Conservative MEP, who steered the bill through EU negotiations, described PNR as “an important new tool for fighting terrorists and traffickers”. He said: “By collecting, sharing and analysing PNR information our intelligence agencies can detect patterns of suspicious behaviour to be followed up. PNR is not a silver bullet, but countries that have national PNR systems have shown time and again that it is highly effective.”

EU governments now have two years’ grace to get a European PNR system up and running, although Kirkhope expects faster implementation. The law requires airlines to give European security services basic information about all travellers flying into and out of the EU, including names, email addresses and phone numbers, itinerary, baggage, how they paid for their tickets and passport data.

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Information will be kept for five years; elements that could identify an individual will be anonymised after six months, although security services can get personal details on special request. The scheme may be extended to flights between EU countries, pending agreement among national governments.

MEPs also voted in favour of a separate law aimed at strengthening data protection standards, which the parliament insisted had to be agreed alongside the data collection plan. The idea of sharing air passenger data has been batted around EU councils for more than a decade, but repeated failures to find agreement had turned PNR into a political talisman.

The EU finally struck a provisional agreement last December, but unusually long delays over ratification called into question whether it would hold. Following the Brussels attacks the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, blamed the parliament for the delays and urged MEPs to fulfil their responsibilities.



The UK is the only EU country with a fully fledged PNR scheme but several others including France, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden are testing or using partial versions of a national data-sharing scheme. The US, Canada and Australia also collect PNR data and the EU has signed agreements with all three to exchange passenger information.

Fourteen EU countries shared €50m (£40m) of EU funds to get PNR up and running, with almost €18m handed out to France alone. Challenged this week as to why France had not finalised a national PNR system, Valls said the French scheme was still working out technical issues. He added: “If we want a national PNR that works, it must be coupled with a European PNR.”

Security services argue that air passenger data is a vital aid to combat terrorists and organised criminals at a time when at least 5,000 Europeans have travelled to Iraq and Syria to take up arms. One case cited by security services is that of a people trafficker who was identified by PNR data because he made frequent round trips to the same destination, always alone on his outward journey and always sitting next to a young woman on the return leg.

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Green MEPs say PNR is a “false solution” and that authorities fail to share information they already have. “PNR is a placebo at best,” said Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German MEP, who speaks for the Greens on home affairs. “[It] will not only undermine the fundamental rights of EU citizens but also undermine the security of our societies by diverting badly needed resources from security and intelligence tools that could actually be useful for combating terrorism, like targeted surveillance.

“The tragic attacks on Brussels and Paris underlined that the problem is not the lack of information on terrorist suspects, as all suspects were already known to the authorities. Instead, it was the failure to properly share this information and act.”

Claude Moraes, a British Labour MEP who chairs the parliament’s home affairs committee, said PNR was “just one tool in the box” and national governments needed to do more to improve police cooperation. EU countries promised to make a big leap in data exchange and joint police work when they signed a treaty in the German city of Prüm in 2005. The British government, which could have opted out, chose to take part.

But Moraes said governments had not done enough to follow through on the Prüm convention. Failures of intelligence sharing were highlighted in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, for instance, when the chief suspect Salah Abdeslam was stopped by French police but released, allowing him to flee to Belgium.

Moraes said PNR had become “displacement theory” for EU member states. “It is very easy to understand and very symbolic,” he said. “It has become a way they can not look at the failings of intelligence sharing.”

• This article was amended on 19 April 2016 to correct a description of Jan Philipp Albrecht as a Belgian MEP. He represents northern Germany.