The European Commission today issued a proposal that would require airlines to provide member states with passenger name record data on passengers flying to or from the European Union

, setting off what it expects to be a two-year process of negotiating and refining the plan. According to the proposal, carriers would transfer PNR data to member states, which then would "analyze and retain the data for the purpose of preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting serious crime and terrorist offences." The proposal did not specify how data would be transferred, though EC plans on "limiting the impact on privacy and minimizing the costs for air carriers." According to the proposal, PNR data would be made "anonymous" a month after the flight for which it was provided and would not be retained for more than five years. Authorities in some EU nations already collect such data "on a case-by-case or on a flight-by-flight basis," EC noted, adding that the new proposal calls for a "coherent" approach across EU members and "a more systematic use of the data for all relevant flights." Australia, Canada and the United States already require EU carriers to furnish such data when passengers fly to or from those countries, EC noted.