Wednesday 28 March 2012

Report on EU-US PNR Treaty rejected in Committee

Sophie in ‘t Veld’s (ALDE) report to the LIBE (Civil liberities, justice and home affairs) Committee was rejected yesterday. The report to reject the EU-US treaty failed in a vote of 23 votes for, 31 against, and 1 abstention.

The PNR treaty will confirm the transfer of passenger data on flights to the US to the Department of Homeland Security. In ‘t Veld had urged rejection of the treaty for several reasons, but chief among them was the loopholes which permitted the data to be used for unspecified purposes outside the treaty’s aim of fighting terrorism and serious transborder crime.

It’s likely that the EP will assent to the treaty in plenary now, avoiding a clash with the US similar to over the SWIFT I treaty.

3 comments:

  1. I for one am pleased that Int'Veld's dangerous if well-intentioned report has been rejected! We in Europe should be supporting the Americans in their fight against Terror! After all, how would WE feel in London if we had lost 3,000 of our citizens in a dreadful atrocity?

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  2. I disagree. This is a very big interference in citizens' lives and it is not limited to terrorism and serious crime. We should take measures to increase security, but we should always be willing to critically examine these measures: are they the least damaging way to citizens' liberties that can be used? In this case the lack of safeguards to hold the government to its original purpose is, for me, a deal breaker.

    If government say that the guilty have nothing to hide, then we should say that the government shouldn't be worried about being limited to the purpose it has itself expressed.

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  3. Objectively, Europe has been a transit point and conduit for a stunnign amount of global terror.

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