Assita Kanko reaches agreement on a law on collecting air passenger information

The European Parliament’s Justice and Home Affairs Committee gave the green light today to the bill on the collection of passenger information by airlines. The new rules are part of the fight against terrorism and organised crime. Assita Kanko, the chief negotiator of this dossier, stresses the importance of this new legislation: “Criminals take advantage of the differences between the Member States to fly around the world anonymously. They can also travel within Europe for a long time without being identified. That is why new rules were urgently needed.”

Assita Kanko emphasises that the proposal does not change the nature of the data collected, but it does change the way in which it is collected: “If you want to take targeted action against criminals, you need reliable data. Those data are not available today. Each Member State just does whatever it chooses, and that leads to blind spots. Through these new rules, the competent authorities of a Member State can check passenger data before the plane lands. Passenger data will now be automatically recorded at the time of check-in. This way, staff can focus on targeted checks so that the comfort and privacy of other travellers are not compromised. The collected data must be deleted from the central router after 24 hours.”

Comfort and safety

There will thus be no additional red tape for passengers. According to Kanko, this new set of regulations was necessary to continue ensuring passenger comfort and safety: “These rules are intended to keep track of the movements of suspicious persons. This must be done quickly, smoothly and uniformly everywhere. Since you can’t check everyone, you must be able to do that in a targeted manner. I am happy that my colleagues have shared my view on this. This is yet another step forward in the fight against terror and crime and it strengthens our European external borders.”

Final agreement before the end of the legislature

The plenary meeting of the European Parliament will discuss the agreement in December. Subsequently, negotiations with the Commission and the Belgian Council Presidency will start, likely in January. “The aim is to reach a final agreement on the text before the end of the current parliamentary mandate,” Kanko says.