Nineteen questions for travellers

The European Union wants to collect personal data on air passengers travelling to or from the 27-nation bloc and store them for 13 years under draft anti-terrorism proposals to be unveiled tomorrow.

EU states will have to collect 19 pieces of personal data including phone number, email address and payment details, a draft seen by Reuters shows. The plan mirrors a US scheme.

Airlines would send the information to the first EU state where a plane is to land, the draft says.

A European Commission official said the system would not burden airlines as they already collected such data for commercial purposes.

He said the proposal would not create a pan-European database as each state would collect its own data and share it as needed.

Approval of all 27 states is needed to make the proposal law.

- Reuters