Mr President, I wish to thank the rapporteur for her considerable work on this issue and to say that my Group will support this report.

The point has already been made – not least by the Commissioner – that there is an issue here about balancing security and civil liberties. It is our job as parliamentarians to scrutinise proposed agreements and to hold the line in terms of civil liberties. My Group believes that the balance is wrong in this agreement, because there is a lack of certainty on the protection of information. It seems, in many respects, to be a fishing policy – a wide trawl with the hope of catching something, and who cares about the by-catch, as it were.

We have already heard about the question of those refused boarding. What happens to them? What happens to their employment prospects if they cannot get into the United States because some of their details do not look right? The issues of appeal and redress are crucial in any legal situation.

We are already aware that certain European Union airlines have been fined considerable sums of money by the United States for not supplying full data. Certainly the attitude that we have heard from them is that they are quite willing to see the American Government in court over these particular fines. This also raises the issue of whether our own institutions, despite the difficult situation, have the right effectively to override our own data-protection rules and controls in an international context.

Lastly, on the issue of passenger consent: it becomes totally meaningless if it has no result but to sign away rights that you were never sure you had in the first place. So we shall support the report.

Jean Lambert