The EU and the US have come to a new agreement on the “sharing” of passenger information on transatlantic flights (or the west-bound ones anyway). The negotiations were carried on under some duress – err, with a degree of urgency – because the previous agreement on spying on (among other things) the meal preferences of Europeans had to lapse on October 1st due to the small problem of it being illegal. However, the Americans were insisting, levying fines on airlines who did not break European law and supply the information to various US agencies.

So hats off to our steely European negotiators. They stuck to their Euroguns and heroically won major concessions from the world’s number one superpower: under the terms of the new agreement the US will not take the information; it will be given it.