The European Commission in February 2011
proposed to require airlines to transfer to member states passenger name record data for flights entering or leaving the European Union "for the purpose of preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting serious crime and terrorist offenses." After the committee rejected the proposal by a 30-25 vote, committee chair Juan Fernando López Aguilar (Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats, Spain) "proposed that the matter be put to Parliament's Conference of Presidents in order to decide how to proceed," according to a committee statement.