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The European Council has started re-writing from scratch the European Commission's proposal for an EU-PNR scheme as a result of several EU governments' intention to go further in this matter.
Some European governments, with the UK in the lead, want to extend the PNR scheme used now under the US-EU agreement to all types of travel (air, land and sea), not only in and out the EU borders but between EU countries and even within each country. They also want the data and information gathered to be used not just for entry-exit, but also for any law enforcement purpose.
The declared purpose of collecting the data is "the prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution and punishment of terrorism and a group of other serious offences, defined by reference to the list in the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant." However, there is an additional statement which gives more freedom to control: "The instrument would of course cover the reporting and prosecution of other offences brought to light during controls." While the PIUs (Passenger Information Units) collect the data from airlines and assess the passengers, "competent national authorities" (i.e. police, security agencies) would be allowed to use the data for other purposes than for assessing security risks for flights.
The list of data to be collected practically covers the same 19 sets of data under the US-EU PNR agreement. Also, there will be two transmissions of the data, one 48 hours before the flight take off and one when the flight is all boarded.
The procedure for analysing the "terrorist or criminal threat" will include a first analysis "based on risk indicators" (such as source country or destination) "pre-established by the competent (national) authorities" and a second one based on "national, international and European files". However, the issue here is that the 27 EU countries have watch lists which are extremely different. Hence, the proposal suggests the necessity of developing "common methods and indicators".
As some of the State Members do not wish to extend the scheme to flights inside the EU space, the text proposes that the choice of individual states to take the measure at the national level should be "explicitly recognised". This means that actually the PNR will be collected by all Member States on all flights in and out of the EU and if a Member State wants to survey intra-community flights as well, it can very well do it.
EU-PNR scheme being re-written by the Council (4.10.2008)
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2008/oct/04eu-pnr-rewrite.htm
EDRIgram - Dispute between UK government and EU over the use of PNR
(27.08.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.16/uk-eu-pnr
Observatory: EU surveillance of passengers (PNR)
http://www.statewatch.org/eu-pnrobservatory.htm