EU-US: In Strasbourg yesterday justice commissioner Franco Frattini said negotiations were due to start today in Brussels on a new agreement between the EU and the US on the transfer of airline passenger data and if a deal was not made by the end of the month airlines face legal challenges from their passengers for handing over personal information to the US.
"If the event that there is no new agreement in place on October 1st, air carriers from Europe to the US risk legal complaints from citizens based on divergent national legislation on transfer of passenger name records data to the United States," he said. "For that reason it is extremely important to guarantee the legal certainty with an agreement concluded at European level."
MEPs accepted the commissioner's proposals to agree a new interim deal with the US on a different legal basis, after the existing agreement was ruled illegal by the European Court of Justice. But Dutch MEP Sophia In't Veld, who wrote a report on such data, said Europe needed to "speak with a single voice" and demanded greater transparency. The Commission could not make deals "behind closed doors". "We all want security but we should not give more data than necessary," she said.