Passenger Name Record law has been published in the Belgian Official Gazette
The Passenger Name Record (PNR) law has been adopted in Parliament in December 2016. It was published in the Belgian Official Gazette on 25 January 2017. On the basis of this law, carriers will be obliged to send data on their passengers travelling from, to, or across Belgium to a central database.
The law of 25 December 2016 transposes the EU Passenger Name Record (PNR) Directive (27 April 2016, 2016/681), the Advanced Passenger Information (API) Directive as well as part of the Directive 2010/65/EU (reporting formalities for ships). The purpose of using PNR data is to ‘detect and prosecute terrorist offenses’, while the purpose of API data is to ‘improve border control and fight illegal immigration’.
The Belgian government has decided not to limit the scope of the law to airlines, but also to include other international modes of transport, that is to say international travel by bus, high-speed train and boat. The law also foresees the collection of PNR data for intra-Schengen flights.
Royal Decrees still need to be adopted for every transport sector and for the travel agencies to determine what passenger data will need to be transmitted as well as the transmission modalities (after the Privacy Protection Commission has delivered its opinion).
The carriers will send PNR and API data from passengers going from, to, or across Belgium before departure to a single access point, with the aim of checking this data with relevant databases of the intelligence and security services.
This data will be analyzed by the Passenger Information Unit, to be created within the Federal Public Service Home Affairs, consisting of its own analysts as well as seconded experts from the police, intelligence services and customs.
The carriers will have to check the conformity between the travel documents and the identity of the passenger, to guarantee that the data meet the standards as defined by the law. This is not an identity check as such and it is not a limitation of the free movements of persons within the Schengen area.
The system is not functional yet in practice. A certain number of measures still need to be taken. For example, the Passenger Information Unit has to be created.
Royal Decrees will be adopted for each transport sector and the travel agencies to determine the date of entry into force of the law.
The Passenger Name Record law is available (in French and Dutch) on the website of the Belgian Official Gazette.