Brussels, Jan 5 (DPA) European Union (EU) experts are to meet Thursday to discuss whether the bloc needs to improve its airport security in the wake of the failed Christmas attack on a US airliner over Detroit, officials in Brussels said.
The meeting is expected to include a debate on whether to bring in EU-wide rules for the use of controversial body scanners, which look through the traveller’s clothes to produce an image of their body.
The group of experts from each of the EU’s 27 member states is set to meet Thursday, with the talks set to last all day, a spokeswoman from the EU’s executive, the European Commission, said.
However, it is not expected to draw any conclusions, with further meetings on both technical and political level expected later in the month, officials said.
Even if it were to do so, the recommendations would be unlikely to result in new EU laws in the next few months. Only the commission can draft EU rules, but the current body has already reached the end of its five-year mandate, and its replacement is not set to be sworn in before the end of the month at the earliest.
The question of body scanners is a controversial one in Europe, where the systems have been traditionally seen as a threat to privacy because of the intimate details they can reveal.
At present, each member state decides for itself whether it will deploy the scanners. So far, Britain and the Netherlands have done so on a trial basis at some airports.
In 2008, the commission called for EU-wide rules on the issue, but the European Parliament blocked the move, arguing that the commission had not taken privacy and human rights into account.
The issue jumped back up the agenda at Christmas, when a Nigerian passenger on a flight to Detroit tried to trigger a chemical bomb attached to his leg, to be stopped by his fellow-travellers.
Standard airport security systems had failed to spot the bomb.
