EU and US push for air data deal

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European and American negotiators are making a new effort to resolve a dispute over the transfer of data about transatlantic airline passengers.

The US demands up to 34 pieces of information about each traveller, but a deal authorising European airlines to hand it over lapsed on 30 September.

Officials were holding a video conference on Thursday in an attempt to agree a new accord.

If they succeed it will be considered at a late-night meeting of ambassadors.

Interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg would then give the deal final approval on Friday.

US undertakings

Currently airlines are working in a legal limbo.

They could in theory be prosecuted by national data protection authorities for allowing the US access to the data, which includes passengers' names, addresses, credit card details and meal preferences.

The basis of Europe's response could be to accept the transfer of the data to [other US] agencies, on conditions that they respect the same rules as the Customs service European diplomat, quoted by AFP <a href="/1/hi/world/europe/5029258.stm" class="">Q&A: EU passenger data row</a> A Commission official said: "We really hope to have an agreement. It is essential. We don't know how long the USA will keep to the undertakings in the lapsed agreement."

He said the negotiations could go on until midnight, and that the ambassadors would meet after that.

The US undertakings place restrictions on what the US authorities can do with the data they receive and how long they can keep it.

US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has argued that US Customs and Border Protection - which currently pulls the data directly from European computerised reservation databases - needs to be able to share it freely with other counterterrorism officials.

Push v pull

A European diplomat quoted by the AFP news agency said the EU could agree to the data being shared more widely among US law enforcement agencies as long as they respect the same rules as Customs and Border Protection.

The negotiations are also reported to have been focusing on how the US stores the data, and how the US obtains it - with the EU favouring a system where airlines "push" information to the US, instead of letting them "pull" it from databases.

The US began to demand the passenger data in the wake of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

The EU agreed to the data transfer in 2004, but the European Court of Justice annulled it in May 2006, on a technicality.

Any deal agreed now would be an interim measure, lasting until November 2007.

Negotiations on a new deal to take effect from 2008 could begin within months.