From the Irish Times:
Aircraft security regulations to be maintained in spite of doubts
Jamie Smyth
European Diary: Security measures introduced at European airports in November 2006 in the wake of a foiled plot to blow up British aircraft with liquid explosives came under the spotlight at the European Parliament last week.
The Liberal Group held a public hearing on regulation 1546, which restricts passengers to carrying a maximum of one litre of liquids, gels and pastes in separate 100ml amounts onto aircraft.
The EU chose not to annul the regulation yesterday following its first six-month review of the measure, citing a "continued risk posed by liquid explosives".
Yet at last week's hearing, scientists, MEPs and the airline industry strongly criticised the rules. "Senseless", "idiotic" and an "infringement of fundamental freedoms" were some of the charges laid against the security regulation on liquids by a succession of speakers.
"The threat as well as the technology exists, but the measures are neither effective nor proportionate and pose a considerable nuisance to the vast majority of passengers," said Liberal MEP Ignasi Guardans, who co-chaired the public hearing.
"Extra security measures need to focus not on inanimate objects but on people," said Christophe Naudin, director of international security at the University of Paris II, who demonstrated his hypothesis by smuggling a detonator for a bomb and explosive liquids past the parliament's security staff.
"You can make explosive devices with two solids or with liquids of less than 100ml . . . these measures have not enhanced security, rather they are more to give passengers the feeling that flying is safe."
Carol Van Eijk, professor of physics at Delft University, revealed how the X-ray scanners used at airports cannot tell the difference between explosives and aftershave.
"Identification of liquid explosives is very difficult to do and none of the present methods can do the job in a fast and efficient way that is needed at airports," he said.
Despite these limitations, an EU committee of experts on aviation security decided at a recent meeting that the restrictions should remain.
The committee, which is made up of experts from all 27 member states, must review the regulation every six months to assess whether it is still appropriate. It meets in secret and does not have to make public the justification for imposing or retaining a particular measure. This process, known as comitology, is commonly used to enact a raft of regulations that become law in the EU.
MEPs can express an opinion on the regulations, which are decided in consultation with the European Commission, but cannot amend them.
Several MEPs at the hearing said this secretive procedure meant there was little public scrutiny of regulation 1546 before it was adopted into European law.
The commission and EU states deny this. "MEPs can give an opinion on the regulation and if some didn't read it that is not our fault," said a commission official, who admitted the liquids rules are "imperfect", but are the best possible response.
Meanwhile, the EU committee of experts has loosened the regulation somewhat.
"We think the ban on liquids is necessary," the Swedish member of the committee told The Irish Times. "But a separate proposal to restrict and harmonise rules on the size of hand luggage has been delayed for a year to see if it has any security benefit."
Under the regulation the EU had planned to set the size of hand luggage to a maximum of 56x45x25cm later this month. But fierce lobbying by the industry, which feared travel chaos, helped persuade the EU experts to postpone the measure.
"The problem would have been transfer passengers coming from outside the EU," says Frank O'Connell, president of the European Travel Retail Council. "They would arrive at EU airports with bags that simply didn't meet the EU regulations."
O'Connell, who is also director of Aer Rianta Retail, has witnessed similar chaos caused by the implementation of the liquid restrictions for transfer passengers from outside Europe. Every day 2,500 litres of duty free are confiscated at Frankfurt airport from non-EU transfer passengers because the regulation does not recognise security procedures outside the EU. Meanwhile tit-for-tat rules introduced by Australia now mean that EU passengers have their duty-free goods confiscated upon arrival there. "The rules are causing a huge level of uncertainty for passengers and causing a chill in the duty-free business," says O'Connell.
Aer Rianta's reliance on duty free (it also operates shops in Russia, the US and the Middle East) was the reason the Republic voted against the regulation. Two other countries abstained in the crucial vote, which has never been made public.
But the sceptical evidence presented by experts at the hearing last week suggests it may be time for a proper debate about regulation 1546, and also how to open up the comitology procedure to more scrutiny to boost public accountability.