The
European Parliament voted Thursday to approve a new, long-term agreement on the
transfer of European Union airline passenger data to authorities in the United
States. The deal replaces a temporary agreement struck in 2007 that Parliament
wanted changed owing to concerns about data protection. The U.S. government had
threatened to exclude European Union passport holders from its Visa Waiver
Program if the new deal was not ratified.
Parliament
approved the new EU-U.S. agreement on transferring data from passenger name
records after 409 members voted in favor, 226 voted against and 33 abstained. A
proposal to refer the deal to the European Court of Justice was voted down. The
new agreement formally will be ratified on April 26 by the justice and home
affairs ministers of European Union member states and will apply for seven
years.
Under
the new deal, U.S. authorities will retain PNR data in an active database for
up to five years, although information which could be used to identify an
individual passenger will be masked after the first six months. After five
years, the data will be moved to a "dormant database" for up to ten
years more. The dormant database will carry stricter access requirements for U.S.
officials. After 15 years, all data identifying a specific passenger will be
deleted, but the PNRs will be retained indefinitely, a point on which some MEPs
particularly were unhappy.
There
are also greater reassurances on so-called "sensitive data"—such as
meal preferences or information about medical conditions—which might reveal a
passenger's ethnic origin or state of health. Sensitive data will be accessed
only on a case-by-case basis and will be
permanently deleted within 30 days of receipt unless required for a specific
investigation.