Report on the joint review of the implementation of the Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America on the processing and transfer of passenger name records to the United States Department of Homeland Security

The current Agreement between the United States and the European Union on the use and transfer of passenger name records (PNR) to the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) entered into force on 1 July 2012. The Agreement provides for a first joint review one year after its entry into force and regularly thereafter as jointly agreed.

This joint review was carried out on 1-2 July 2015 in Washington. Its main focus was to follow up progress on the previous review recommendations from 2013; the implementation of the Agreement, with particular attention to the method of transmission of PNR as well as the onward transfer of PNR as set out in the relevant articles of the Agreement.

The joint review is based on the methodology developed between the EU and the US teams for the first joint review of the 2004 PNR Agreement, which took place in September 2005, and for the joint review in 2013. The first part of this methodology consisted of a questionnaire sent by the European Commission to the DHS prior to the joint review.

The Commission Staff Working Document (SWD) accompanying this Report consists of five chapters:
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the background to the review and the purpose and procedural aspects of the exercise.
Chapter 2 presents an update on the implementation of the recommendations from the review in 2013.
Chapter 3 presents the main findings of the joint review of 2015 and the issues to be further addressed by DHS.
Chapter 4 presents a summary of the recommendations from the 2015 review.
Chapter 5 presents the overall conclusions of the exercise.
Finally, the SWD is supplemented by an Annex which contains the questionnaire and DHS replies thereto.

• Primary Source

ESO: Background information: Security Union: Commission reports on the implementation of the EU-US TFTP and PNR Agreements http://www.europeansources.info/record/security-union-commission-reports-on-the-implementation-of-the-eu-us-tftp-and-pnr-agreements/

EUR-Lex: SWD(2017)14: Joint review of the implementation of the Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America on the processing and transfer of passenger name records (PNR) to the United States Department of Homeland Security http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2017:014:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2017)20: US response to the European Commission's report on the Joint Review of the US-EU Passenger Name Record Agreement http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2017:020:FIN

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