Finland's attempt to join the United States' Global Entry programme to ease travellers' arrival at American airports has broken down due to differences over what level of agreement between the two countries is necessary to justify sharing of personal data.
The Global Entry scheme allows pre-approved, supposedly low-risk travellers to use faster lanes at US airports, significantly speeding up progress through immigration.
This would allow smoother and more reliable transfers to domestic flights on arrival in the country for individuals approved by both countries' authorities.
In 2019 some 130,000 Finnish citizens travelled to the US, with some 30,000 of them visiting at least twice.
Fifteen countries are signed up as part of the scheme, but Finland's attempts to join have foundered because the US government is unwilling to enshrine the agreement in a bilateral treaty, preferring instead a "Joint Statement" by the two countries.
GDPR concerns
Finland's interpretation of European Union data protection law (GDPR) is that a treaty is necessary to share the data required with a foreign power, and a Joint Statement would not be sufficient.
"There should be firm legal grounds for handing over personal data, according to Finnish and EU law," said Jussi Tanner, Director General of Consular Affairs at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
"A Joint Statement does not work for us. THe treaty model does not work for the United States. So we have unfortunately reached the end of the road."
Talks are now on ice and will not be revived unless one country or the other changes their stance.
Germany, Britain and the Netherlands have joined the Global Entry scheme as EU states, but did so before GDPR came into force.
When Finland started negotiations with the US in 2021, officials raised certain questions about the plan. If an individual was rejected for Global Entry status due to information in Finnish law enforcement records, would that information stay with the US authorities and subsequently make their entry into the US more difficult?
In addition, the system could allow criminal organisations the ability to check what data Finnish police held on certain individuals by applying for Global Entry status and seeing whether or not the application was successful.
Tanner said that this concern was raised during the process, but if the plan had gone ahead it would most likely have been resolved during negotiations.
Users with an Yle ID can leave comments on our news stories. You can create your Yle ID via this link. Our guidelines on commenting and moderation are explained here.
