EU Foreign Ministers Approve EU-U.S. Agreement on Airline Passenger Information

The Council of the European Union has approved the recently-reached EU-U.S. agreement on how personal information on airline passengers from the EU will be provided to U.S. authorities. The new seven-year agreement will help prevent and combat terrorism and serious transnational crime while ensuring compatibility with European standards of fundamental rights and privacy.

Key features of the agreement include: data transfers will be "pushed" by EU air carriers, not "pulled" by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; 19 types of data will be collected (down from 34 originally foreseen); data will be retained in an active database a maximum of seven years followed by eight "dormant" or non-operational years; data will be used only to prevent and combat terrorism and other serious transnational offenses; sensitive data (e.g., racial or ethnic origin) must be filtered and deleted with few exceptions; U.S. access and redress mechanisms will be available to all people regardless of citizenship and country of residence; implementation of the agreement will be reviewed periodically and the European Commission will make proposals in the fall about the monitoring mechanism.

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