Von Boetticher (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I recently wanted to fly to China. In order to do this, I had to apply for a visa and provide a whole array of highly personal details. As well as flying from Frankfurt to Peking, I was planning to take a connecting flight with a Chinese airline from Peking to Guilin, and this involved some of the data being transferred from one airline to another, a process that enables the Chinese state to get its hands on a plethora of personal data. I have to tell Mrs Lambert that I am unaware of there being any sort of data protection law in China, nor can I ask who there is storing my data, or which data are stored for any particular purpose; I cannot ask for it to be corrected, contact the Chinese data protection supervisor or take the government to court. Despite that, we are not banning flights to China or demanding general agreements.

Now there is, I know, a great difference involved here, in that, when you fly to the United States, their system can directly access or ‘pull’ your data, rather than it being ‘pushed’ over to them, so that the United States have direct access to our systems; they are not limited to the data that we forward to them. Let me add, Commissioner, that the demands we are making now bear no relation to some sort of wish list; this is European data protection legislation, in black and white. The obligation is now on you to switch over to a ‘push’ system. What I would like is a response from you, and right now. Failing that, I appeal for more calm. The fact that different standards of data protection prevail does not mean that citizens’ rights are under threat. The United States has a legitimate interest in this instance, that being in the defence of their country. I doubt whether other countries could claim the same, even though they disregard our data protection legislation.

I might add, ladies and gentlemen, that I never got to China, because I had not submitted my visa information in good time. Unfortunately, I had no legal remedy against that either.