Redefining Role of PNR in EU FTAs. A Comparative Outlook

Taking the European Union as the case-study of polyphonic actor, this paper advances two perspectives on the role of PNR data in EU FTAs from the perspective of compliance mechanisms at the EU’s disposal. First, compliance mechanisms provide resilience-building opportunities for the EU’s external action and allows for more ‘legal creativity’ and innovations both during the period of negotiating free trade agreements (such as the forthcoming ones with New Zealand, Australia and Morocco) and as the agreements enter into force (for instance, EU FTAs with Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Singapore or Canada). Second, compliance as a tool of political power provides special procedures for a more responsive and effective implementation of bilateral agreements. By examining compliance in a very sensitive area such as Passenger Name Record (PNR), this paper identifies suitable analytical frameworks to study compliance mechanisms as risk-management and normative goal-attainment mechanisms, which make it central to upholding fundamental standards of sorts that are part of EU bilateral agreement anatomy such as security. A comparative outlook on EU bilateral agreements and the way compliance mechanisms are regulated therein, in contrast to classical FTAs, will help make a case for an enhanced and redefined compliance mechanism for PNR management as well as analyse its varied design and enforcement procedures.