European Parliament Endorses Rules on Use of Passenger' Data for Fighting Terrorism

The European Parliament approved on Thursday the new directive on the use of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data in the EU for fighting terrorism, trafficking and other types of serious crime.

The directive will oblige airlines to hand national authorities passengers' data for all flights from third countries to the EU and vice versa, the European Parliament said in a statement.

"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", Parliament's rapporteur for the proposal, Timothy Kirkhope commented in the statement.

Passenger information units (PIUs) that will be set up by EU Member States will responsible for collecting, storing and processing PNR data, for transferring them to the competent authorities and for exchanging them with the PIUs of other member states and with Europol. The transfers shall only be made "on a case-by-case basis" and exclusively for preventing, detecting, investigating or prosecuting terrorist offences or serious crime, according to the directive.

The directive will apply to "extra-EU flights", but member states could also extend it to flights from an EU country to one or more other EU countries, provided that they notify the EU Commission.