COMMUNICATION OF PASSENGER DATA BY AIR OR SEA CARRIERS ORDER

COMMUNICATION OF PASSENGER DATA

BY AIR OR SEA CARRIERS

SUBSIDIARY LEGISLATION 460.18

COMMUNICATION OF PASSENGER DATA

BY AIR OR SEA CARRIERS ORDER

9th November, 2007

LEGAL NOTICE 360 of 2007, as amended by Legal Notices 427 of 2007

and 252 of 2016.

(1) The title of this Order is the Communication of

Passenger Data by Air or Sea Carriers Order.

(2) The purpose of this Order is to transpose the European

Union Directive 2004/82/EC on the obligation of carriers to

communicate passenger data.

(3) This Order shall be without prejudice to the provisions of

article 15 of the Immigration Act and it shall have the aim of

improving border control and combating illegal immigration by the

transmission of advance passenger data by carriers.

In this Order, unless the context otherwise requires

"the Act" means the Immigration Act;

"the Board" means the Immigration Appeals Board as stipulated

in the Act;

"border crossing point" means any crossing point as may be

designated from time to time by the Principal Immigration Officer

for the crossing of external borders into Malta;

"carrier" means, for the purpose of this Order, any natural or

legal person whose occupation it is to provide passenger transport

by air or by sea from a third country to Malta;

"personal data" shall have the same meaning as assigned to it by

the Data Protection Act;

"the Minister" means the Minister responsible for immigration;

"Principal Immigration Officer" means the person appointed to

such office by the Prime Minister under article 3 of the Act, and

includes, within the limits of any authority granted by the Principal

Immigration Officer under article 3(3) of the Act, any public

officer acting under such authority;

"third country" means a country which is not a Member State of

the European Union and, for the purposes of this Order, excludes

Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein

Provided that, information may also be requested from

Member States if the exchange of such information is regulated by

b i l a t e r a l a g r e e m e n t s c o n f o r m i n g t o M a l t a ’s i n t e r n a t i o n a l

obligations.

COMMUNICATION OF PASSENGER DATA

BY AIR OR SEA CARRIERS

(1) Not later than two hours before departure of a carrier

from a third country, the Principal Immigration Officer may request

such carrier to provide the following data concerning every

passenger that it will carry to Malta

(a) number and type of travel document used;

(b) nationality;

(c) full name and surname;

(d) date of birth;

(e) border crossing point of entry into the territory of

Malta;

(f)

code of transport;

(g) departure and arrival time of the transportation;

(h) total number of passengers carried on that transport;

(i)

initial point of embarkation.

(2) Such data is to be collected by the carrier who shall be

obliged to take all necessary measures to transmit the data

electronically or, in case of failure, by any other appropriate means,

to the Principal Immigration Officer by the time of the closure of

check-in.

(3) Information requested under this article shall be provided in

an electronic form that is compatible with the technology used by

the recipient of the information, unless an alternative form and

manner of information transmission is authorised by the recipient

of the information.

(1) A carrier who fails to transmit data in accordance with

this Order, or who transmits incomplete or false data, shall be liable

to pay to the Principal Immigration Officer such penalty as may be

established by him, being not less than three thousand euro

(€3,000) but not exceeding five thousand euro (€5,000).

(2) Such penalty shall be recoverable by the Principal

Immigration Officer, after the term within which an appeal to the

Board may be entered has elapsed without an appeal having been

entered, or after the decision of such Board, as a civil debt due to

the Government and the provisions of article 466 of the Code of

Organization and Civil Procedure shall, notwithstanding any other

provision to the contrary, mutatis mutandis apply to such debt.

Any carrier who feels aggrieved by any decision of the

Principal Immigration Officer under article 4 may, within twenty

working days of the notification of the decision, enter an appeal to

the Board against such decision and the Board shall have

jurisdiction to hear and determine such appeals.

(1) The carrier shall inform passengers that the data in his

possession may be referred to the Principal Immigration Officer at

his request and may be used for law enforcement purposes.

COMMUNICATION OF PASSENGER DATA

BY AIR OR SEA CARRIERS

(2) The personal data referred to in article 3 which has been

transmitted to the Principal Immigration Officer shall be held in a

temporary file and, after the passengers who were the subject of the

communication have entered Malta, the Principal Immigration

Officer shall delete the data related to them within twenty-four

hours of transmission by the carrier, unless any data is still required

by the Principal Immigration Officer in the carrying out of his

functions, subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act.

(3) Carriers shall be responsible to delete, within twenty-four

hours of the arrival of the means of transportation, the personal

data they had collected and transmitted to the Principal

Immigration Officer for the purposes of this Order.