Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-20-Speech-1-123"
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"en.20081020.15.1-123"2
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".
Mr President, I will start with another remark on the absence of the Council, because in my speaking notes I had some remarks about good cooperation between the European Parliament and the Council, dialogue, spirit of the Treaty of Lisbon etc., but the Council is absent for this debate as well. I think that is absolutely disgraceful, because it is the Council that is hammering out a PNR policy and is required to reply to questions, and it is not here. The Council has publicly made solemn pledges to involve the European Parliament, but now we see what the pledges of the Council are worth – nothing. I think this is an affront not to the European Parliament but to the citizens who are entitled to answers and transparent decision-making. So please, Mr President, pass on my discontent to the representatives of the presidency.
Law enforcement authorities already have the necessary powers to obtain PNR data on a case-by-case basis in the context of an investigation or prosecution into known suspects and possible associates. So the Commission proposal would merely remove the obligation of getting a warrant and due cause. So if law enforcement authorities need new powers, it is for them to demonstrate when and how the existing powers were insufficient. So far we have never had an answer to that question.
We already have a directive on API data, and they can indeed be used for the identification of persons and they can be used to run persons against a watch list. This is not possible with PNR data. So if we have a directive on API data, then why do we need more? That has not been demonstrated.
Automated systematic analysis of PNR of all passengers can be useful for other purposes, for example combating drug trafficking or illegal immigration. They may be very legitimate and valid purposes, but let us have it on the table and let us not talk about the prevention of terrorist attacks, because that is something completely different.
If the Commission and the Council intend to expand the scope of the proposal to cover other purposes, as I have just said, they should clarify in detail, for each stated purpose, what use will be made of the PNR data. In other words, you can use PNR data in a targeted manner in the context of a specific ongoing, concrete investigation. You can use PNR data for automated systematic analysis, for example against drug trafficking, but in that case you do not need to store the data. So we need to know exactly what the purpose is.
That brings me to the issue of, let us say, the legal base, because if you read the small print of the EU-Australia PNR – and this also applies to the EU-US PNR – it is not only about the fight against terrorism and crime but also about immigration, public health risks, administrative purposes, customs, immigration, supervision and accountability of public administration. That has nothing to do with the fight against terrorism.
The Commission and the Council have chosen a third-pillar instrument for the PNR proposal and also for the agreements with other countries, but the third pillar is about police and justice cooperation within the European Union. It is not about security in other countries.
The Commission may argue that, indirectly, if we provide data to the Americans, the Australians and to South Korea, for example, we will benefit from it in terms of security. That may well be true, but then I would like to understand where public health comes in. Where does immigration come in? Where does the supervision and accountability of public administration come in? It has nothing to do with it.
I will not go into all the other details of the implementation, but the question of purpose and justification needs to be answered before anything else, because the claim that it has been so useful in the fight against terrorism has not been substantiated to date: we are still waiting for evidence, and I would very much like to have that. And, if there is no evidence, then we should look at the proposal again.
It is a joint debate on, the one hand, the proposals for an EU PNR and, on the other hand, the agreement on PNR between the EU and Australia. They are essentially the same problems, and the problems have already been raised in the context of the agreement with the US and, later on, with Canada.
One of the main issues is that of purpose limitation, because everything else follows on from that – purpose limitation or, in other words, the justification for the proposal to begin with. Now, everything is wrong with the justification, everything is wrong with the purpose limitation. I shall describe this to you.
To start with, subsidiarity: the Commission and the Council state that the aim of the proposal is harmonisation of national schemes. However, only a few Member States – I think it is three so far – have either a PNR system in place or plans for such a scheme. Therefore, the proposal cannot possibly harmonise national systems, because they are non-existent. It merely creates the obligation for all Member States to set up such a system for the collection of PNR data. I would call this ‘policy laundering’, because whatever we cannot achieve at national level we try to achieve via the back door of the EU. I am very pro-European, but I do not like this.
Moreover, the Commission has proposed a decentralised scheme so that the European added value is even less clear, and it creates an unworkable patchwork of rules and systems for the carriers and a very intransparent system for citizens.
The stated purpose in the proposal of the Commission is to identify persons who are, or may be, involved in a terrorist or organised crime event, as well as their associates, create and update risk indicators, to provide intelligence on travel patterns and other trends relating to terrorist offences to be used in criminal investigations and the prosecution of terrorist offences and organised crime.
The Commission, in its proposal, claims that the EU has been able to assess the value of PNR data and to realise its potential for law enforcement purposes. However, to date we have not seen any concrete evidence to substantiate this claim. Any evidence so far provided by the US is anecdotal and, to be honest, the information that we got from various US government agencies over the last year or so only seems to demonstrate that the mass collection and processing of PNR is not useful at all.
There has only been a single evaluation of the US PNR scheme, which did not assess the results. As a matter of fact, a recent DHS-funded report raises substantial doubts over the usefulness of behavioural surveillance as a tool to identify potential terrorists. This is easy to understand, because how are you going to develop risk profiles of potential terrorists on the basis of PNR data? It is blatant nonsense. How are you going to determine if anybody has bad intentions on the basis of his telephone number or his credit card number? In other words, the purpose stated in the Commission proposal is demonstrably invalid and unfounded, and yet that is the basis on which the Council is working.
The Commission and Council seem to be confused as to what can and cannot be done with PNR data. PNR records tend to contain very summary data and, on average, no more than 10 fields, with very basic information. So it is totally unclear how this data could serve to identify high-risk persons."@en1
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