EU EU Council Presidency proposes follow-up on extending PNR to sea and rail traffic
03 August 2019
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EU
EU Council Presidency
proposes follow-up on extending PNR to sea and rail traffic
3.8.19
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The Finnish Council:Presidency has proposed following up on a previous report: Monitoring the implementation of Directive (EU) 2016/681 on use of passenger name record (PNR data - State of Play and Way Forward (LIMITE doc no: 6300-19, pdf).
And see: EU PNR extended to internal flights and only a matter of time before PNR is extended to sea, rail and road traffic too (Statewatch News)
A later Note from the Council Presidency:
Widening the
scope of PNR to other forms of transportation in addition to
air traffic- discussion paper (LIMITE doc no: 10597-19,
pdf) suggests that:
"Traffic volumes from both within
and outside the Schengen area are increasing. Increasing crossborder
travelling entails cross-border crime such as migrant smuggling
and irregular migration arrangements, which involves third-country
nationals that are smuggled into the EU territories, or narcotic
drugs smugglers, terrorists and other criminals. This poses
a growing challenge to national law enforcement authorities in
combating crime." [emphasis
added throughout]
"The feedback for the questionnaire was mostly positive,
although some Member States felt, that it would be too soon to
make changes to the PNR Directive."
As a number of Member States are still implementing the PNR Directive covering air travel in and out of the EU and intra EU flights too.
The Presidency suggests that: "sea traffic and international high speed trains" should be the next priority:
"In Finland, the number of people travelling by sea traffic and air traffic are about the same; approximately 20 million travels are made with both transportation forms to and from Finland. Like air traffic, sea traffic can be used to facilitate illegal entry into the country, human trafficking and to transport for example illegal firearms and drugs."
It concludes:
"If the scope of the PNR Directive
would be widened, an impact assessment about the other travelling
forms would be necessary. Changing the scope of the PNR directive
to include other
travelling forms would at least in the beginning cause costs
for the transportation companies, but in the other hand it
would simplify the process, when the companies would have to
give the PNR information just once to one authority. Having common
obligations and rules among EU Member States would help to clarify
the obligations for traffic operators."
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