Commission seeks deals on flying with drinks

The European Commission is negotiating bilateral deals with third countries to overcome the problem of airlines passengers arriving in one EU member state but travelling on elsewhere and having their duty-free purchases taken from them.

While an international agreement would be more favourable, the Commission is seeking bilateral agreements on "urgent cases", a spokesman said.

The issue centres on the EU restrictions imposed on the amount of liquid brought on board an aircraft.

Since 6 November, passengers wanting to pass through airport security have been restricted to carrying individual containers with a maximum of 100ml of liquid each. All containers must also fit into a 1-litre transparent and re-sealable plastic bag. Once they pass through security they can buy liquids at duty-free which are sealed in clear plastic bags.

The problem for some passengers originating outside the EU who have bought duty free is that if they arrive in one EU airport and then fly on to another, their purchases will be confiscated. The problem also applies to passengers flying into the US where similar restrictions on liquids apply.

"Our services are working on this but it will take some time to reach a solution," said the spokesman.

MEPs last week called for the new EU rules to be evaluated to see if they were appropriate. "Presently nobody knows if this ‘transparent bag’ rule is not more of a harassment for passengers than a sensible measure for additional security," said Austrian centre-right MEP Reinhard Rack.

The Commission spokesman said a regular evaluation would be carried out shortly on the new rules but that they "worked well in Europe and that has been fully recognised".

Liberal MEPs raised the issue of the Commission keeping secret an annex to the law on liquid re-strictions. "Everyone wants to be safe in the air, and there may be some limited information on technical specifications which we don’t want terrorists to see," said UK Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford.

"But to keep all the liquids restrictions secret contravenes the basic democratic principle that laws must be made public so citizens can contest them or seek remedy if they are abused or applied in a heavy-handed or inconsistent way," she added.

The Commission spokesman said that it was necessary to keep the annex secret for security reasons but that its contents had been seen by members of the Parliament’s transport committee.

The European Commission is negotiating bilateral deals with third countries to overcome the problem of airlines passengers arriving in one EU member state but travelling on elsewhere and having their duty-free purchases taken from them.

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