Once the EU has revised agreements with Canada, the US and Australia to share passenger name records (PNR) of suspected criminals or terrorists, lawmakers will embark on an intra-EU equivalent earmarked for release in 2012, the commissioner said.
The news comes as the European Parliament prepares to debate the EU's three external agreements in today's plenary session (10 November).
"We have PNR [agreements] with the US and the EU. It is a lack of logic that we are not sharing [PNR] in the EU," the commissioner said.
She also pointed out that all the bloc's member states had requested an EU-wide PNR agreement.
Malmström may have her work cut out as the previous commissioner for justice and home affairs, Franco Frattini, had made a similar proposal which was held hostage to disagreements between the EU's capitals.
"These discussions did not lead to a consensus on a number of essential elements of the PNR system, such as for instance the use of the data base created under such a system," reads an internal Commission document.
According to the previous proposal, the EU will have to collect 19 pieces of personal data on air passengers coming into and leaving the bloc's airspace, including phone numbers, e-mail addresses, travel agents, full travel itineraries, billing data and baggage information.
Malmström praised Sweden and the UK for having bilateral PNR agreements with countries in the EU and said the Swedish authorities had managed to track down human traffickers and drug smugglers as a result.
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Peter Hustinx, has criticised the Commission for doing its work in reverse order, arguing that external agreements should be made after the EU has agreed its own standards on data protection and PNR.
"The global agenda should therefore concentrate first on the general EU data protection framework, then on the possible need for an EU PNR scheme, and finally on the conditions for exchanges with third countries, based on the updated EU framework," the EDPS's office said in response to a Commission consultation on PNR.
The EU last week unveiled revisions to the Data Protection Directive which will now be discussed in national capitals and the European Parliament.
