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The previous agreement adopted in 2004 on EU-US personal data sharing was annulled by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in May 2006, invoking the wrong legal basis. After a series of negotiations between UE and US a new interim agreement was concluded on 6 October 2006.

The old agreement was kept in force by the Court decision until 30 September. This explains the rush of the EU and US officials in agreeing on a new decision. From the privacy point of view, the new agreement is worse than the previous act.

According with the new deal, 34 types of passenger data - including names, telephone numbers, addresses, credit card information, bank account numbers, email addresses, type of meals served on board and other details of their

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A debate took place in the European Parliament (EP) on 7 September regarding the negotiation of a new interim agreement between EU and US on the issue of passenger name record (PNR) sharing.

The very criticized agreement adopted in 2004 on EU-US personal data sharing was annulled by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in May 2006.

The Finnish EU Presidency and the EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini had been highly criticized by the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for having had informal meetings on the matter with US negotiators on 18 July 2006 and apparently also on 16 August 2006 without informing the EP.

Frattini pointed out that the issue of concluding an interim agreement by 1

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Despite the recent decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the annulment of the EU-US deal on Passenger Name Records PNR data, the European Commission is trying to push for PNR data to be shared also with the secret services of the European governments for all the flights within Europe.

The new position expressed by Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for Vice President of the European Commission and Justice and Security Commissioner, comes just a few days after several people were charged in UK for alleged plans to blow up transatlantic planes.

This time the data would not be reduced to the name or address of the passengers and could include also information related to their credit card,

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Report with a proposal for a European Parliament recommendation to the Council on the negotiations for an agreement with the United States of America on the use of passenger name records (PNR) data to prevent and combat terrorism and transnational crime, including organised crime. Prepared by Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Rapporteur: Sophia in 't Veld
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2006/jul/ep-libe-eu-us-pnr-report.pdf

The European Commission is moving ahead in its efforts to comply with the annulment by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of the agreement between the European Community and the US Government on the transfer of passenger name records (PNR).

The Commission adopted on 19 June 2006 two initiatives in order to comply with the ECJ decision. The first initiative is to recommend to the Council to terminate the Agreement with the US by the end of this month, since under the international law, the agreement remains in force for a period of 90 days after it is denounced by either party.

The second initiative is to ask the Council to give an authorisation to open negotiations for a new Agreement with the Unites States on the basis of Article 38, Title VI of the Treaty on European Union. The Commission considers that

The European Parliament obtained the annulment by the European Court of Justice of the agreement between the European Community and the US Government on the transfer of passenger name records (PNR) from foreign carriers to the US with the view to combat terrorism and maintain national security. In order to prevent problems the agreement will be still in force until 30 September 2006. Until then the Member States have time to solve the legal issues arising from the annulment within or outside the EU context.

After 11 September 2001 air carriers flying from Europe to the US were in a dilemma. The US Government required to access personal data of travellers contained in the databases of all foreign carriers. On the other hand, 1995 EU Directive on data protection restricts the transfer of personal data from

As a follow up to the latest anti-terror plan of action (49 proposals) of November 2005, the Danish government is now proposing new anti-terror legislation.

In the current round of public hearing, massive criticism has been raised by NGOs, legal experts, Danish industry, telecom providers, and from a number of political parties, including the Liberal Party, which is one of the ruling parties in the current government. The criticism concerns both the substance in the proposals and the process of their preparation.

The proposals presented by the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Science & Technology are quite far reaching and encompass a range of intrusions into citizens' privacy.

Among the most debated proposals are: - An access for the police intelligence services (PET) to request

Security services and the police in UK will have a new power. According to the immigration bill going through the Parliament, airlines will have to give them advanced access to personal online details of all passengers travelling in and out Great Britain. The home secretary, Charles Clarke announced the intention to extend the system to domestic flights as well.

This comes after a three-year pilot system that has been used in Britain for international flights, allowing access to passenger data after the flights left. Home Office stated that access to such information before the flights would have had much better results in stopping any terrorist suspects on board flights in and out Britain.

Certain airlines expressed the fear that such a procedure would increase the check-in time. As an operator assessed, the check-in time might increase by