Under a new agreement between the United States and the European Union, European airlines won't be required to share as much information on their passengers with the department as previously.

The new agreement on Passenger Name Record, or PNR, data, effective as of Jan. 1, 2008, stipulates that the department will no longer have the right to access 34 PNR data per passenger in the airlines' databases. Instead the airlines will be required to give the department 19 PNR data per passenger.

"The EU welcomes the new agreement, which will help to prevent and combat terrorism and serious transnational crime, whilst ensuring an adequate level of protection of passengers' personal data in line with European standards on fundamental rights and privacy," the European Commission said in a press release on Monday.

The agreement, which replaces the interim agreement and will be valid for seven years, will be accompanied by further assurances to the EU on how the United States will use this information.

Under the terms of the agreement the United States can only use the PNR data "for the purpose of preventing and combating terrorism and related offenses and other serious offenses that are transnational in nature," according to the press release. The department will be allowed to retain the information in an active database for seven years and in a "dormant, non-operational database" for eight years.

The United States will only be allowed to access information on race and racial background under very special circumstances in which it would have to alert the European Commission.

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Leander Schaerlaeckens, UPI Correspondent