Europe laid out strict conditions for the exchange of airline passenger data with the US, Canada and Australia, insisting it should be restricted to terror and criminal probes.

The EU executive arm adopted proposals on swapping passenger name record (PNR) data with third countries in an effort to ease concerns about privacy rights.

“PNR data has proven to be an important tool in the fight against serious transnational crime and terrorism,” said EU home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem.

“But at the same time, it raises important issues about protection of personal data,” she said.

The European Commission proposals follow the resumption in August of a banking data sharing scheme with the US that had been suspended for months over privacy concerns raised by the European Parliament. A provisional EU-US agreement on passenger data is in operation, but the European Parliament has postponed a vote on them as lawmakers have demanded modifications.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the US believed that the current guidelines already met the concerns of all sides.

“We obviously want to ensure safe and secure air travel to the US, but we also want to respect passengers’ right to privacy,” Mr Toner told reporters.

“We think that the current agreement that’s under discussion right now satisfies both those rquirements, so we would just ask them for passage of that agreement,” Mr Toner said.