Brussels casts doubt on £1.2bn border controls
Jamie Doward writes in The Observer:
A £1.2bn scheme to secure the UK’s borders risks breaching European law because it restricts the right to free movement, say Commission officials.
Their verdict has thrown the future of the e-Borders scheme into question and prompted accusations that ministers are ignoring legal advice.
The flagship government project, which will collect the electronic records of everyone who enters and leaves the UK, aims to tackle terrorism, crime and illegal immigration. Passengers will have to supply detailed personal information with their travel plans to their carrier.
A letter from Ernesto Bianchi, acting head of the General Justice, Freedom and Security Directorate, raises doubts about the legality of asking passengers for anything other than their passport.
July 13th, 2009 at 01:10
Here’s some of the uncorrected oral evidence to the Home Affairs Committee that may have prompted the article:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmhaff/uc817/uc81702.htm
UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 817
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
THE E-BORDERS PROGRAMME
Tuesday 30 June 2009
Mr Tim Reardon, Chamber of Shipping
…
Q32 David Davies: Are the UK Borders Agency requirements going to be legal in the other countries to which you sail? Is it possible you are going to end up breaching data protection laws if you carry out their requirements in other countries? If so, where do you go from there, because you are going to be breaking the law somewhere?
Mr Reardon: Indeed. Ferry operators have got in trouble before by doing things that the Home Office here has asked them to do which has made them fall foul of the laws in the countries in which they were doing it. It is a question that we asked of the Home Office right back at the start of the process: Can you confirm to us that what you are asking us to do is lawful in the places where we will need to do it? There are two potential areas of difficulty: first, with national law in the countries at other ends of UK ferry routes, particularly France, where 85% of UK traffic comes from and goes to. There are difficulties there of data protection and also of whether commercial organisations have powers under French law to capture data from state documents. We believe that they do not. Secondly, there is the question of European law and whether what the UK is devising as its e-borders scheme is compatible with the Data Protection Directive, and indeed with the general rules of rights of free movement of European citizens within the EU. We see problems there – or, at least, we see questions there. We have referred that later point to the European Commission and received guidance from them that there is a problem. At the moment ferry operators are in a difficult position, being asked on the one hand to do something by the Home Office and on the other aware that doing so could place them in a difficult position at the other end of the route. Clearly, that is not a position that we want to be in. The practical consequence is that ferry operators are looking to the Home Office to confirm that its scheme conforms with the overall European legal framework within which it must sit and with national law at the other end of the ferry route.
Q33 David Davies: Have they done so yet?
Mr Reardon: No.
Q34 David Davies: Will you not also want them to take responsibility for any legal action that may arise as a result of you implementing UK law and then being, I suppose, sued or taken to court by some other European country?
Mr Reardon: Undoubtedly. In the past we have had our staff locked up for doing things that the BIA, as it then was, asked us to do. That is clearly not a place we want to return to.