EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini has unveiled plans to beef up the fight against terrorism.
Mr Frattini wants to give police new rights to check air travellers and crack down on radical Internet sites.
The package is yet another security step taken in the EU in the wake of the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the London transport attacks the following year, which have increasingly alarmed privacy advocates.
The measures also include an action plan to limit the use of explosives.
Under the plan, special national units would analyse dozens of pieces of information about travellers flying between EU countries and assess whether any passenger, including children, or crew member poses a threat to security.
The passenger name record (PNR) information would includes addresses, ticket information and payment details and mirrors a US scheme introduced after the 11 September 2001 attacks.
The data, to be provided by airlines at least 24 hours before departure, would be kept for 13 years.
Mr Frattini said that if the plan is agreed by EU states, airlines would not be allowed to fly into and out of the Union if they did not provide the information.
The measures would also outlaw 'public provocation to commit a terrorist offence', including when violent propaganda, training tips on 'terrorism tactics' and 'bomb-making recipes' are posted on the websites.
EU legislation dating from June 2002 would be modified to state that, in such cases, It would not be necessary that a terrorist offence actually be committed, for a prosecution to succeed.
The online civil liberties monitoring organisation Statewatch expressed concern that people might be targetted merely for voicing political opinions.
And the European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx, has already complained that the EU's security crackdown that followed the 2001 attacks has gradually eroded privacy rights.
'There should be no doubt that effective anti-terror measures can be framed within the boundaries of fundamental rights,' he said last June in a letter to the EU's Portuguese presidency.
