Belgium
wants checks of passenger information for rail travel
New
rules are aimed at boosting security; opponents say they are
disproportionate.
By JOSHUA POSANER
AND LAURENS CERULUS 10/21/16, 2:13 PM CET Updated 10/21/16, 9:52 PM
CET
The Belgian
government has started parliamentary talks on plans to impose
airline-style data registration on international rail and bus
passengers as part of its response to recent terror attacks.
The so-called
Passenger Name Records legislation, or PNR, is being discussed in the
federal parliament Friday, and it could force train operators to send
booking data to a central database 24 hours before departure.
“It would be
pretty stupid to tell terrorists or violent extremists that you’re
trying to catch them through aviation [controls] only. These people
read papers too. They’ll move to other ways of transportation,”
said Olivier Van Raemdonck, spokesman for Minister of Interior Jan
Jambon.
Thalys and Eurostar
services heading north from France, and Deutsche Bahn services from
Frankfurt would be covered, hitting international rail’s status as
a check-free open system of travel. For rail, the measures will only
affect services using Belgium’s high-speed lines, so the
requirement would not apply to national operator SNCB’s services to
Luxembourg and the Brussels-Amsterdam train that crosses the border
32 times a day.
“The terrorist
attacks in Paris and Brussels changed everything,” said Benoit
Hellings, a Green MP in the federal parliament. For him, the proposed
rules are unwieldy and authorities will struggle to handle mass data
efficiently.
PNR is just one of
18 measures announced by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel
following the Paris terror attacks last year and an attack on a
Thalys train in France in August 2015 that injured three people.
“It’s not only
about getting hold of [terrorists] via lists that allow us to arrest
them, but also about profiling, mapping the movements,” Van
Raemdonck said.
The legislation is
now in draft form, with parliamentary debates set to thrash out the
terms of what could become four different laws — one each for rail,
aviation, bus and boat travel.
The European
Commission is taking a wait-and-see approach, saying only that it
would respond once full legislation had been prepared.
The Commission’s
Director General for Transport Henrik Hololei wrote to the Belgian
permanent representative in the summer requesting to be kept
informed. Hololei warned of a “profound impact” on overland
travelers if new checks were brought in.
An EU PNR directive
already covers aviation data checks, but it provides for national
systems of mass collection to be implemented for other modes of
transit. Data privacy watchers have challenged the existing aviation
arrangements.
MEPs have refused to
ratify the bilateral EU-Canada PNR deal in the European Parliament
until a European Court of Justice judgement comes through on its
legality.
An advocate general
for the ECJ said in a recent opinion that there were serious concerns
about the Canada deal in its present form.
“Privacy is not
such an issue, we’ve worked a lot on that and negotiated. We know
where the limits are,” Van Raemdonck said. “What’s important is
that we have to be able to implement the systems” for sectors
beyond aviation.
Authors:
Joshua Posaner and
Laurens Cerulus
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