Today, as I look back to the conversations I had with many of you during the Registered Traveler Forum in Amsterdam, I once again feel that the timing of the second event in our 2008 calendar of appointments could not have been better. On May 19, three days before the event, the US Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff and Dutch Minister of Justice Hirsch Ballin signed a landmark treaty enabling trusted travelers from the two countries to benefit from the Registered Traveler schemes operating in the other country without the need to enroll twice. This agreement – the Transatlantic Deal – is hopefully only the first in a series of such treaties which will usher in the era of international RT programs and a more efficient, secure and convenient way to fly.

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