Roundup: Counter-terrorism: EP vote on passenger name records likely next week

The long-awaited vote on European Union (EU) Passenger Name Records (PNR) legislation is likely to be held at next week's European Parliament (EP) plenary session here, British MEP Timothy Kirkhope said Thursday.

Kirkhope, who is the rapporteur for the PNR legislation, said the prospect of a vote next week follows efforts by the EU Council of Ministers to speed up work on EU data protection legislation.

According to Kirkhope, a vote on data protection is now scheduled in the home affairs committee on Monday night, with both data protection and PNR put be to a plenary vote next Thursday.

Under the PNR directive, airlines would be obliged to hand EU countries passenger data in order to help authorities fight terrorism and serious crime.

A final vote on the proposal in the EP has been ready since late 2015 when a compromise deal was agreed between the EP and national governments.

This agreement was designed to allay civil liberties fears about intrusion into passengers' personal information. It was endorsed by a majority of the EP's civil liberties committee.

However, at a meeting of EP group leaders held before the March plenary session, only two center-right political groups, the ECR and EPP, voted to add it to the plenary agenda. A full vote was thus postponed.

Following the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Kirkhope renewed his call for a vote on the proposal.

"Finally, it looks like we are going to vote on the PNR," Kirkhope stated Thursday. "It's been five years in the making with many setbacks and much negotiation, but I believe the EU needs this tool urgently."

"PNR will provide us with a vital way of detecting foreign fighters, drug traffickers and serious criminals," he continued, "The patterns of behavior that can be picked up from PNR data have proven invaluable in the UK where a national PNR system is in place."

"Rather than 28 different national systems being created, we are now set to have a single law enabling the collection and sharing of information to give intelligence agencies a full picture, and to ensure robust privacy protections across the whole EU," he stated.

The use of PNR data is not currently regulated at the EU level. Some member states, like the UK, already have a PNR system, while others have either enacted legislation or are currently testing data systems.

Proponents of PNR say that existing EU-level measures, such as the directive on Advance Passenger Information and the Schengen Information System, do not enable law enforcement authorities to identify "unknown" suspects in the way that an analysis of PNR data does. Endit