Out-Law News 2 min. read

UK should opt in to extend EU PNR plan to all international flights, say Lords


The UK should opt in to proposed new rules on handing air passenger details to the authorities so that it can try to expand the rules to cover flights within the EU as well as those into the region, a House of Lords committee has said.

In February the EU proposed a Passenger Name Record (PNR) Directive which would extend the kinds of passenger-tracking systems already used by the UK and the US to every European country, though it would only track passengers on flights from outside the EU.

Because the proposal relates to the areas of justice and home affairs, the UK can opt out of the Directive. But the House of Lords has urged the Government to opt in in order to ensure that the Directive is changed to include all international flights.

The Home Office provided the Lords Committee with a report outlining its views. The Committee's report said that the Home Office wanted the Directive to apply to all international flights, not just those coming from outside the EU. The Lords Committee agreed.

"The Government point out that the volume of journeys between Member States is three times greater than between Member States and third countries," said the Lords report. "They believe that a PNR system providing cover only for travel to and from third countries 'would seriously limit Member States' ability to tackle criminal activity', and that collecting PNR data on extra-EU routes but not on intra-EU routes 'serves simply to displace rather than address the risk."

"The Government intend to continue to press for the Directive to be extended to intra-EU flights. In this we fully support them," the Committee said.

It said that a previous version of the proposed EU rules explicitly allowed for countries to adopt PNR policies that are more extensive than that laid out in the EU rules. This would have allowed the UK to continue to collect PNR data on flights from other EU countries, but the new rules did not make it clear that this was possible.

"[The proposed Directive says that] Member States may use the data they have collected for purposes going beyond those in the Directive; it is not clear to us that they may continue to collect data from flights other than those covered by the Directive," said the Committee's report. "We urge the Government to seek to have this point clarified, so that there is no possibility that the Directive will result in their no longer being allowed to collect data which are currently available to them."

The Government should opt in to the Directive because it is its only chance to change the law, the Lords said.

"We believe that the Government should opt in to the draft Directive. They will then be in a position to play a vigorous part in extending the Directive to intra-EU flights, and in negotiating the other amendments they seek. Being a party to the Directive will in turn allow the United Kingdom to benefit from the data collected by other Member States," it said.

The Lords said that they had previously not been shown enough evidence to convince them that the collection of PNR was appropriate.

"The collection of PNR data and their transfer to border agencies and law enforcement bodies, and the retention of such data for a number of years, all constitute a substantial invasion of privacy with major data protection implications. It is therefore justified only if the benefits in combating terrorism and serious crime are as great as is stated," the report said. "When in June 2007 this Committee first considered the use of PNR data in the context of the third agreement between the EU and the United States, we were concerned not to have received evidence which would have enabled us to assess for ourselves the value of PNR data."

The Committee has now received that evidence and it has satisfied them that the activity is proportionate.

"We now have no hesitation in accepting the Home Office's assessment of the value of PNR data for the prevention and detection of serious crime and terrorism," the report said.

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