It did not look good for the European Commission last week. It announced the result of a long, protracted negotiation over the amount of information handed over about Europeans when they fly into the US.

The Commission lost serious ground to the US except in one area. On further examining, though, the one apparent negotiating victory disappeared in a cloud of clerical pedantry.

Passenger name records (PNR) are the 34 pieces of information which must be sent to US authorities by airlines on any passenger travelling to the US from Europe. Put in place after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the PNR transfer scheme has long been opposed by privacy activists in Europe.

US security agencies - no slouches, one imagines, when it comes to deal brokering - seemed to have won some pretty major concessions on a new deal to replace one which ran out at the end of July.

US authorities could keep data for longer and they could transfer it to other agencies; even the fact that there was a deal at all on passenger name records (PNR) was seen by the European Parliament and privacy officials as a defeat.

Yet there was one glimmer of light: in the press statement released by several EU bodies and the US, Europe seemed to have won one concession.

"The number of data collected will be of 19, instead of 34 as foreseen by the interim Agreement," said a joint statement from the US and the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the Presidency of the Council.

So they reduced the amount of information sent to the US, right? That is, surely, the only inference to be drawn from such a statement, isn't it?

Turns out the reader should not be so innocent, or so trusting. What the EU agencies agreed to was that almost all of the data collected in the old agreement would be collected in the new one. The only difference is that they will be collected in 19, not 34, fields.

They argue it makes more sense that way: fine. They say that it puts more order into the system: OK.

It is hard, though, to shake the impression that the EU bodies tried to put a gloss on a bad news day by shuffling some columns around and hoping that nobody looked too closely. Thankfully, it didn't work.