#PNR: Positive reactions over Parliament's approval of Passenger Name Records

On 14 April the European Parliament voted in favour of the Passenger Name Records (PNR), a reform judged by many MEPs over different parties as a necessity to ensure more security to European citizens. However, concerns remain over privacy of citizens.

Vice-President Frans Timmermans and Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos issued a joint statement about the vote. Avramopoulos welcomed the positive vote, hoping that it would soon be voted in the Council in order to be ratified by the member states as soon as possible.

They said:"This is a strong expression of Europe's commitment to fight terrorism and organised crime together through enhanced cooperation and effective intelligence sharing. The atrocious terrorist attacks in Paris on 13 November last year and Brussels on 22 March showed once more that Europe needs to scale up its common response to terrorism and take concrete actions to fight it. The EU PNR Directive will be an important contribution to our common response."

The Commissioners underlined how "PNR data can be used for prevention as well as investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences".

Finally, they reassured the critics on the topic of privacy and data protections. He said that the PNR "contains robust safeguards in terms of privacy, data protection and the respect of fundamental rights. PNR data may only be processed for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crime".

Gianni Pittella, S&D vice-president talked in positive terms over the PNR. He said: The PNR directive can be a useful tool in the fight against terror. However, despite the constant portrayal from EPP and other equally demagogic right wing political groups, it is not a silver bullet. We won't defeat terrorism with a sort of water-gun."

He stressed that the PNR alone is not enough and urged for a more centralized and European system. "We urgently need to improve the sharing of information between law enforcement agencies. That is why we pushed so hard for the Data Protection Package to be voted alongside PNR.  Thanks to the approval of the Data Protection Package we now have a harmonized European system that will allow national agencies to process and protect all data much more easily" he added.

The ECR group was also praising the result of the Parliament's vote. Among the promoters of the motion, Timothy Kirkhope MEP said: "We have adopted an important new tool for fighting terrorists and traffickers. By collecting, sharing and analysing PNR information our intelligence agencies can detect patterns of suspicious behaviour to be followed up. PNR is not a silver bullet, but countries that have national PNR systems have shown time and again that it is highly effective.

He also mentioned some of the most controversial aspect of the PNR: "There were understandable concerns about the collection and storage or people's data, but I believe that the directive that we have adopted puts in place data safeguards, as well as proving that the law is proportionate to the risks we face."

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