EU / US Passenger Names Records deal annulled by EU Courts.

Post 9/11 the US demanded that within 15 minutes of take-off for the United States, a European airline must send the US authorities 34 items of personal information about the passengers on board - ow will will impose heavy fines and deny landing rights for any airline failing to comply with the agreement.

The non - elected European Commission, EU governments and the US had signed the deal in May 2004 despite privacy objections from the European Parliament.During negotiations, the U.S. agreed to shorten the time passenger data is stored to 3½ years and promised that the information would be rarely be shared with other countries.

Canada and the EU struck a similar deal last year under which passenger names are transferred to the Canada Border Services Agency. Canada has promised to treat the information in line with EU data protection.

The European Parliament asked the European Court of Justice to annul the May 2004 deal and yesterday the Court found that EU Council of Ministers' decision to sign the agreement on "Passenger Name Records" (PNR) lacked an adequate legal basis and anulled the deal.The European Commission took the decision under the EU Data Protection Directive, but the directive does not apply to data collected for security purposes.See more at Statewatch here.

The case against the data deal was brought by the European Data Protection Supervisor, in support of the parliament. The court said it was the supervisor's first such intervention.

The ruling of the Court, which follows its Advocate General's opinion in 80 % of the cases, may call other EU anti-terrorism measures into question, as a data retention proposal now for review before EU institutions is being carried out under the same legal basis as the PNR agreement.

A very useful history of the case can be read at EPIC

If you want to know more about what a PNR is, how it is handled, stored and retained forever go to this very useful site.

So you thought booking an airline ticket was easy ? The mysteries of the organism disclosed.
Your data are held on the Amadeus network in the EU which is located in Spain (hence graphic) for other airlines.