Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-20-Speech-2-438"
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"en.20040420.19.2-438"2
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".
I hope you will excuse me if I speak for slightly longer than the two minutes, thirty seconds I am allocated, but the issues we are addressing this evening are extremely important and I would like to give them the attention they deserve.
Secondly, there is a legal reason for this international agreement, linked to international law. The European Commission took the position of principle that US law enforcement authorities could only get access to databases situated in the Community if they had been explicitly allowed to do so. Through this agreement the Community grants this permission, subject to a double condition. First, that there is adequate data protection in the US. Second, that a 'push' system is not yet in place. I would make it clear that the Commission shares Parliament's view that 'push' should replace the current 'pull' as soon as possible and the date requested by Parliament – namely 1 July – has been duly noted. We are doing our best to put in place the conditions that will make 'push' possible very soon. However, since the aim is to provide legal certainty today, we need to address this issue now and then work to change it as soon as possible.
From a more political point of view, this agreement fulfils four additional important objectives. First, it ensures the future assistance of the US Government on the basis of reciprocity in ensuring that airlines transfer PNR data to Community authorities if the Community or any of its Member States were to introduce such a system.
Second, it also contains a statement that the US Bureau of Customs and Border Protection is implementing the undertakings that the adequacy finding is based upon, which is, as the House recognises, an important international commitment on the part of the United States.
Third, the agreement also enshrines the commitment to undertake joint reviews on matters relating to the agreement. Last, but not least, the agreement protects travellers against unlawful discrimination on the basis of nationality and country of residence.
Before concluding, allow me to refer briefly to the report that has been submitted, which highlights two legal problems. The first is procedural. The rapporteur considers that Parliament should have been asked to give its full assent rather than just being consulted. My reply would be, as Commissioner Bolkestein explained yesterday, that
in this agreement entails amendment to the data protection directive, which is the condition established by Article 300 of the Treaty for the assent procedure to apply. There is a second concern highlighted in the report, which stipulates that: 'The real scope of the international agreement will evolve at the discretion of the US administration without any legally binding participation from the European Union side'. Let me be clear that the essential link between the three elements of the package – international agreement, adequacy finding and US undertakings – is there to ensure coherence between them. No adequacy finding without undertakings; no legal effect on airlines as regards the agreement without an adequacy finding. So any unilateral change to the US undertakings that would lead to non-compliance with the principles of adequacy would also lead to a suspension of the adequacy finding. Simultaneously, it would also lead to the non-application of the two key clauses of the international agreement, the obligation on airlines to provide the data and the authorisation to the US to pull without any need to modify or revoke the international agreement. This crucial safety valve is built into the agreement to prevent precisely what the report fears, i.e. the European Union side being forced to accept any unilateral change to the US requirements for receiving passenger name records.
To conclude, I would like to urge Members to support the adoption of this agreement, despite their misgivings about the adequacy finding. For the reasons I have explained, this would not necessarily be incompatible with the position Parliament has taken on the adequacy finding. The resolution adopted by the European Parliament on 31 March calls for a wider international agreement incorporating a series of data protection principles. I believe that such an agreement is beyond what is achievable today. That is why I would ask Parliament to back this agreement, not because it is perfect but because it is a great deal better for our airlines to operate under legal certainty and it is a great deal better for passengers to have much improved safeguards than the legal void that would result from a collapse of a package which we have worked so long and hard to negotiate.
I apologise for speaking at such length, but I know this is an issue of considerable importance to Parliament and I wanted to try to deal with the main issues that have been raised.
I want to say at the outset that I am very grateful for this opportunity of addressing you tonight on the subject of passenger name records. My friend and colleague, Mr Bolkestein, spoke to you yesterday about the case for a so-called adequacy finding on this issue. I want to underline once again the fact that the Commission will carefully consider the points of view expressed by Members in the debate in March, when my colleague also spoke, before making its final decision.
Another issue the House knows we will have to consider is the question of the onward transfer of passenger name records data by US customs. As Commissioner Bolkestein made clear yesterday in the plenary, these transfers are a matter of concern to us. Commissioner Bolkestein and I have been in contact with Secretary Ridge of the Homeland Security Department on the kind of assurances that we want on the circumstances in which such transfers would take place. I spoke to Secretary Ridge myself yesterday evening. We look forward to studying his comments, and I can assure the House that his response to our questions will form an important part of our ultimate college decision on an adequacy finding.
It is my task this evening to present the case for the other part of the package, namely the international agreement we have negotiated with the United States. It would provide a sound legal basis for allowing airlines to transfer passenger data to the United States.
Let me start by setting out briefly the background to this issue. None of us will ever forget the horrific attacks on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. The United States was profoundly shocked by them. In fact we were all shocked by those attacks. In Europe we have suffered from terrorist attacks for decades – most recently the appalling bombing of passenger trains in Spain last month. We stand, I hope, shoulder to shoulder with America in the fight against terrorism and I repeat that in my judgment if we had suffered anything like the attacks on the Twin Towers, we perhaps might have an even greater appreciation of how great US concern is over air transport.
Since those attacks the US authorities have taken a whole range of measures to provide their citizens with greater security. The requirement for the transfer of PNR data is one of these. We immediately saw a conflict between the requirements of the US legislation and our own data protection legislation. European airlines were faced with a dreadful dilemma: either to comply with the PNR requirement and risk being taken to court by their national data protection authorities, or not to comply, which would have triggered intrusive extra searches of their passengers. This would have resulted in enormous delays and a potentially serious loss of business for EU airlines to US airlines, which were supplying the required data.
The European Commission had a responsibility to do what it could to help our airlines and their passengers out of this situation. In the short term we made an arrangement with the US which provided for assurances on how the data would be used. This gave some comfort to the airlines, but we recognised that it did not provide a sound legal footing on which to proceed. That is why we have spent the last 15 months negotiating with the United States.
As far as possible, we wanted to uphold the concerns of our citizens for their privacy to be protected. The Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs understandably had a long list of objectives that it wanted us to secure. In the real world though, we were never going to be able to secure everything they would have wished. All negotiation involves compromises and, on this occasion, we had to face the fact that the US was already obtaining the data it wanted.
As outlined in the Commission communication of December 2003, the bilateral international agreement with the US that we are debating today is a necessary element in the framework that the Commission is seeking to put in place both for legal and for political reasons. Firstly, there is a legal reason related to the data protection directive. Determining that there is adequate protection for personal data at the recipient's end is part of what a data controller needs to do before transferring data to a third country. In addition, the controller – in this case the airline – needs a legitimate reason for transferring the data, such as being required to do so by law. However, by law we mean Community law or Member State law. An obligation imposed by a third country cannot automatically justify processing of data within the Community. This international agreement, which will become part of the Community legal framework, creates such a requirement, but subject to one very important condition: the existence of adequate data protection in the recipient country, namely the United States. It is important to underline here that this agreement does not take for granted the existence of such adequate protection in the United States. The obligation on airlines is applicable only if an adequacy finding has been made, and for as long as it remains in force. On 31 March the European Parliament adopted a resolution in which it disagrees with the Commission that the current US undertakings represent adequate protection, and the College will decide in due course how to proceed. However, whatever the Commission decides, this part of the agreement will only be applicable if there is an adequacy finding. Therefore, there is no reason for Parliament to reject the entire agreement on this basis."@en1
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