EU, U.S. miss passenger-data deadline
Posted on Sunday, October 1, 2006
WASHINGTON — The United States and the European Union failed to reach a new deal on sharing air passenger data by Saturday’s deadline, though officials said negotiations would continue.
The issue has raised serious privacy concerns in Europe. The lack of an agreement will cause a “legal vacuum,” Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for the European Commission, said in an interview from Brussels.
But, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the failure to agree won’t disrupt trans-Atlantic air travel.
Without the deal, airlines that hand over passenger data to U. S. authorities could face legal action from national data protection authorities in EU states, officials at the European Commission, the 25-nation EU’s regulatory arm, have said. In addition, the United States has said it could take steps, including fining airlines $ 6, 000 per passenger or revoking landing rights, if data are not turned over.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U. S. government began requiring all airlines flying to the United States to share passenger data, such as names, addresses and credit card information, with Customs and Border Protection.
The European Court of Justice, the highest European court, annulled the deal in May but gave the EU and the United States until Saturday to replace it.
Chertoff on Saturday said in a statement that he had initialed a draft formal agreement that “ensures the appropriate security information will be exchanged and counterterrorism information collected by the department will be shared, as necessary, with other federal counterterrorism agencies.”
The United States requires all airlines flying to the country to submit data. European airlines transfer to U. S. authorities as many as 34 pieces of information about trans-Atlantic passengers.
9 Under the post- / 11 data-sharing agreement, Europe allowed the United States to keep the data for 1 up to 3 / 2 years, but the United States wants to be able to hold onto the information longer. Europe also allowed the United States to share the data, part of a database called the Passenger Name Record, with other U. S. counterterror agencies on a restricted, case-by-case basis. The United States wants to be able to share the data more liberally. In addition to facing the issue of EU legal requirements, the U. S. made additional unspecified demands that the EU needs to discuss further, Todd said. He said the commission would take up the issue Thursday. Telmo Baltazar, counselor to the EU delegation, said talks were positive and constructive. “Talks did not collapse,” he said. “They are at a temporary impasse and are ongoing.”
A final deal wasn’t reached Saturday, Baltazar said, because members of the EU negotiating team said they needed to consult with EU authorities.
The talks have broken down before, and the struggle to reach an agreement underscores the difficulty in reconciling the U. S. government’s growing appetite for information in a post-9 / 11 world with other countries’ desires to protect their sovereignty and their citizens’ privacy, analysts said.
Chertoff, though, said he had been assured that airlines would continue to transmit the data. “There’s no intention for them to interfere with the continued transmission,” Chertoff said.
He also said he didn’t expect airlines to be fined.
“I don’t envision that while we’re in these discussions any country in Europe is going to take some precipitous step to put the airlines in a difficult position,” he said.
Chertoff said there is no legal vacuum because U. S. law is clear that airlines have to provide information about people entering this country.
“This should not be a big issue,” he said. “I can tell you from dealing with the negotiators who were over here that everybody’s negotiating in good faith.”
Despite some misgivings, European officials have spoken favorably at times about sharing data and expressed support for the goal of an agreement. They reaffirmed that view this summer in the aftermath of a foiled terrorist plot aimed at trans-Atlantic flights leaving the United Kingdom.
“We were 90 percent there when the talks broke down,” the EU’s Todd said. Information for this article was contributed by Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post, Jonathan Stearns, Anna Jenkinson and Carlos Torres of Bloomberg News, Leslie Miller of The Associated Press, and Jonathan Peterson of the Los Angeles Times.
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