Ending a stand-off between privacy advocates and those who consider the move crucial to fighting terrorism, the European Parliament gave final approval on Thursday to an exchange of airline passenger data between security forces in the European Union.

Opposition within the European Parliament to the blanket collection of data from the PNRs has stalled for years the law on retaining and sharing passenger name records – PNR.

France and other governments were spurred to make quick to make calls for the swift adoption of PNR to improve security against terrorism after the Islamist militant attacks in Paris last year and in Brussels last month .

The deal was termed as a “precious tool” to strengthen European security by making it easier to detect the movements of suspected Islamic militants ahead of time by the French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve who heartily welcomed the deal.

Arguing that it infringed people’s privacy and that security forces should share more existing information instead there were some left-wing groups who are opposed the measure.

“There is no proof that the mass collection and storage of air passenger data helps in combating terrorism,” said Jan Albrecht, a member of parliament from the Greens group.

Thursday’s vote paves the way for the final adoption of the law by EU member states.

“PNR is not a silver bullet but countries that have national PNR systems have shown time and again that it is highly effective,” Timothy Kirkhope, a European parliamentarian who steered the legislation to adoption, said after the vote.

All PNR data includes name, travel dates, itinerary, ticket details, contact details, travel agent, means of payment, seat number and baggage information.

The data on the PNR would be transferred to the national security services by the airlines operating flights between the EU and third countries as well as intra-EU flights. The data from the PNR would then be delivered to and shared with the European counterparts of the respective national security services.

In a gesture to privacy campaigners that data thus transferred will be rendered anonymous after six months of storage even though the data actually would be retained for five years with the security agencies.

Many European states share PNR data with each other and with countries outside Europe as many police forces are already in the process of collecting PNR data. However the European security is seen to be weakened by a lack of a common EU system including data formats.

“This is a strong expression of Europe’s commitment to fight terrorism and organised crime together through enhanced cooperation and effective intelligence-sharing,” EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said in a joint statement.

(Adapted from cnbc.com)