LUXEMBOURG_U.S. and European negotiators reached an interim deal Friday on sharing trans-Atlantic air passenger data for anti-terrorism investigations, concluding arduous talks that highlighted divisions over privacy rights.
The agreement, which is valid until July 2007, was reached after a nine-hour, trans-Atlantic video conference nearly a week after negotiators missed an Oct. 1 deadline. It replaces a 2004 air passenger privacy deal that the European Union's high court voided last year for technical reasons.
The United States and Europe hope to reach a permanent deal next year. The EU's 25 national governments are expected to give final approval to the interim agreement next week.
The deal always was intended to last only until July 2007, when the original agreement would have expired. An overall renegotiation of all aspects concerning security and data privacy would have taken too long, making it practically impossible to meet the Oct. 1 deadline.
EU Justice Commissioner France Frattini said the agreement defused fears in the European Parliament that Europeans flying to the United States would lose privacy rights.
Under the deal, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will no longer have an automatic right to pull data from European airlines' computer systems, and must instead ask for such information.
The department also may disclose passenger data to U.S. law enforcement agencies only if "they have comparable standards of data protection," Frattini told reporters. It cannot give those agencies direct electronic access to the passenger data, he added.
Negotiations collapsed last week when EU negotiators could not agree to a request by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff for more routine sharing of passenger data among U.S. law enforcement agencies. Washington also wanted the right to access airline reservation systems.
Under the lapsed agreement, passenger data is relayed to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials who cannot routinely share it with other Department of Homeland Security agencies or the FBI.
Reaching a new deal had been an EU priority to ensure airlines could continue to legally submit 34 pieces of data about passengers flying from Europe to the United States. Such data - including passengers' names, addresses and credit card details - must be transferred to U.S. authorities within 15 minutes of a flight's departure for the United States.
Washington had warned that airlines failing to share passenger data faced fines of up to $6,000 per passenger and the loss of landing rights.
U.S. officials said the interim deal was essential for airline security.
"I'm glad to have an agreement that makes Americans safer today than they were yesterday," Chertoff said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
British Home Secretary John Reid called the interim agreement "another major step in the fight against terrorism (showing that) the common alliance against terrorism is, on both sides of the Atlantic, very strong."
French Justice Minister Pascal Clement said the Europeans '"got concrete guarantees with respect to" privacy protection for EU nationals.
The talks reflected disagreements between the United States and the European Union over how far governments should go in curbing personal freedoms to prevent terror attacks.
During the negotiations, EU officials stressed they shared Washington's concerns about terrorism, but demanded strict data protection guarantees in return for more routine sharing of passengers' personal details among U.S. government law enforcement officials.
Washington and Brussels have already faced off over the Bush administration's use of secret CIA detention centers in Europe to interrogate terror suspects.
European governments are also annoyed over a secret deal between the U.S. Treasury and the Belgium-based money transfer company SWIFT, which has for years secretly supplied U.S. authorities with massive amounts of personal data for use in anti-terror investigations, violating EU privacy rules.
Privacy restrictions tend to be stricter in Europe than in the United States.
