Interior Ministers worried about radicalised EU citizens fighting in Syria
Nine EU states ask Parliament to back passenger data law
01/08/2013 - 6:19pm
Nine EU member states are asking the European Parliament to support a directive that will allow authorities to track passenger data in order to monitor citizens travelling to Syria -and back- to participate in that country's ongoing civil war.
In a joint statement issued on August 1, the Interior Ministers of France and Belgium, Manuel Valls and Joelle Milquet, said that at their initiative, ministers from nine countries - which also include Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK- are calling on the EP's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee, to approve a draft directive it rejected on privacy concerns just over a year ago.
The move resulted form discussions in the Council of Interior Ministers held on June 7. EU states are concerned that EU citizens fighting abroad might become radicalised in the process and could then go ahead to perpetrate terrorist attacks within the EU upon their return.
In May, the EU's counter-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, called for urgent action to counter what he called the "serious problem" of 'jihadists' travelling from Europe to Syria in large numbers.
The directive, which the EP's plenary decided to send back to the LIBE Committee for yet another vote, aims to establish a Passenger Name Record (PNI) with phone numbers, addresses and credit card details of passengers entering or leaving the EU. Airlines would then be required to furnish the information to governments.
Sixteen EU states already collect passenger data and share it with the US but do not pass it on to their neighbours in the absence of a common European system to manage this information.
Now, Interior Ministers from the nine states have "written to the President of the LIBE Committee, José Lopez-Aguillar, to highlight the importance, for the security of the European Union and those who live within it, of being able to quickly have at our disposal a PNR system offering a high level of privacy protection," Valls and Milquet's statement staid.
By the end of spring it was thought there were up to 600 EU citizens fighting in Syria. Officials think they made their way to the country through Turkey.
The issue is particularly worrying in France, which has been on heightened security alert since January, when it intervened in Mali to repel al Qaeda-linked rebels.
"Maybe 50 (French nationals) are still on the ground (in Syria), 40 are in transit and about 30 have returned and are under surveillance by our services," Valls said last month, adding that a "handful" had been killed in fighting. europe on line
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