This European travel authorization for Americans/Canadians is a direct response(retaliation?) to what the Americans and Canadians introduced years ago, which is the ESTA program. The European one is less data-invasive and 1/3 of the price of the ESTA and equal in price to the Canadian ETA.

Addendum: The airlines love these additional authorizations. This is because they have a bond to return people denied entry at the border at their cost; which they then attempt to recoup from those they've returned. The travel authorisation weeds out a certain number of travellers who will be denied entry and who will probably not pay the full-fare one-way return ticket price that the airlines charge.