As RFI (International French Radio) notes, interior ministers of EU countries had long advocated for the adoption of the PNR database. This issue became particularly acute after the Paris attacks of 2015. Even then, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls repeatedly addressed MEPs, urging them to vote in favor of the PNR system.
However, this idea had its long-standing and numerous opponents among both left-wing MEPs and far-right ones, who blocked its adoption. Many of them dislike the fact that a single database will store personal information about passengers.
The PNR database should include not only passenger names and flight directions, but also payment data, address, phone number, passport details, and even pre-ordered menu (the airline, for example, records information that the passenger is a vegetarian or does not eat pork). In addition, a single European air passenger database allows cross-referencing information with a list of potentially dangerous citizens before they enter EU territory.
Until now, European airlines have stored and transmitted certain data about their passenger transport to European law enforcement agencies. In addition, under agreements concluded with the USA, Canada, and Australia, these companies transmit, upon request, select information to the relevant authorities of those countries. However, a single European system for exchanging information about passengers did not exist until now.
Among the opponents of the PNR system is the leader of the French far-right party 'National Front', Marine Le Pen, who sees it as 'an old American demand'. 'Under the pretext of monitoring terrorists, they are offering us surveillance of all EU citizens,' she repeatedly stated.
Other MEPs delayed the adoption of PNR, citing that the European Parliament should first develop a single European legislation on the protection of personal data. In their view, European law on privacy was not supported by laws penalizing violations of this right.
And one of the deputies of the European Greens group, Philippe Lamberts, directly called the PNR system the beginning of a 'police state': 'They present this as a system aimed at identifying suspects. But after the dozen recent terrorist attacks in Europe, we saw that those who committed them were already known to police and intelligence services. However, not all intelligence services and police, because they adhered to the idea of not sharing data among themselves. So the problem is only that the available information was not fully used. In the case of both the Paris and Brussels attacks, the fact that we would have had full access to passenger movements would have given us nothing at all, because they were known anyway. So we need to stop deceiving our citizens and taking them for idiots. The PNR system promotes not an anti-terrorist Europe, but a police state conducting mass surveillance of citizens.'
Thus, the document, developed back in 2011 by the European Commission and introducing a single European PNR system, had been under consideration by European deputies for 5 years. Of course, the attacks in Brussels accelerated its adoption. On April 14, 463 deputies voted for the document introducing it, while 174 representatives of the European Parliament voted against.
A representative of the right-wing faction of the European Parliament, French deputy Alain Lamassoure, believes that we cannot stop at the introduction of the PNR system. The European Parliament is also discussing the idea of creating a single European police.
'I can only recall some simple facts. The Toulouse terrorist Mohammed Merah flew to the Middle East several times, and US intelligence services knew about it, but ours knew nothing. One of the Kouachi brothers (who attacked Charlie Hebdo magazine – ed.) was also in the Middle East, and some of our partners were aware, but not us. Coulibaly's wife (the terrorist who took hostages in a kosher supermarket in Paris – ed.) managed to get to the Middle East, not through France, but through Spain. And again, there was no exchange of information between Spanish and French services. In other words, we badly need a common database. And I would even add that we need a single passenger information agency and a single European police, like the FBI, to successfully fight terrorism and criminal groups. The PNR system is a first step towards achieving such a result,' Lamassoure said in an interview with RFI.