Passenger data row escalates to Court of Justice

After having failed to convince the EC to back-pedal on the agreement allowing the US to harvest the personal data of travellers heading into the country, MEPs are making a last ditch attempt to stop the accord.

The Euro MPs don't intend to let themselves be stopped short by Brussels on the sensitive issues of passenger data. On 21 April, they decided to take the matter before the European Court of Justice. It's a measure that just squeaked in with a small majority – 276 votes for, 260 against and 13 abstentions.

Three weeks ago, the parliamentarians asked the Commission to re-examine the accord negotiated with the US authorities in December 2003, which green-lighted the transfer of data on reservations by Europeans flying to the US.

The US administration, however, demanded such information (name, credit card number, telephone number and even dietary preferences) be included in the passenger name records (PNR) from March 2003 – well before the agreement was reached. According to Washington, such information could help to identify terrorists before they landed on American soil.

The European Court of Justice must now determine if, in signing the agreement with the US, the Commission has overstepped its powers and acted in violation of European data-protection legislation.

For the MEPs, US authorities' access to PNRs is illegal under the terms of the national right and European right to privacy. They demand the signing of an international agreement between the US and European authorities that sets out a list of guarantees which protect the right to privacy.

The Commission rejected that possibility and put pressure on the MEPs to ratify the original agreement as soon as possible. The Irish presidency of the EU has also demanded that the MEPs support the accord.

According to the non-governmental organisation on European digital rights, the Irish minister for European affairs intervened to try and influence the MEPs' votes by underlining that all the questions pertaining to the right to privacy had been taken into account in the original agreement.

According to the same source, Chris Patten, Commissioner in charge of external relations, had himself before the vote raised the issue that the transfer of data could have taken place, whatever the Commission's decision, as individual national governments have the right to authorise it.

Estelle Dumout writes for ZDNet France