The European Court of Justice (ECJ) judged on Tuesday (9.30 a.m.) whether an EU law on the use of passenger data is compatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

EU law provides for the systematic processing of large numbers of passenger data when crossing an external border of the European Union. This is intended to prevent and detect terrorist offenses and other serious crimes.

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In this specific case, a Belgian human rights organization is complaining about how Belgium implements EU law. The PNR law there obliges airlines, train, bus, ferry and travel companies to pass on the data of their passengers who are traveling across national borders to a central office in which, among other things, the police and secret services are represented. That’s too much for the organization.

The so-called PNR Directive keeps the ECJ busy. For example, the Administrative Court of Wiesbaden and the District Court of Cologne submitted questions to the ECJ about the EU law in 2020. The Wiesbaden administrative court, for example, has considerable doubts about the data protection of the passenger data law.