Press Release
European solidarity in the identification of tsunami victims: Luc Frieden speaks out in favour of automated European identification data exchange

Date of release : 05-01-2005

Policy area : Justice and Home Affairs Justice and Home Affairs

Today Luc Frieden, the Luxembourg Minister for Justice and current president of the Council of Ministers for Justice and Home Affairs, called for improvements in the cooperation of the police and judicial systems in Europe in order to be better able to assist with the identification of missing persons in the catastrophe in Asia.

There are currently thousands of Europeans listed as missing following the tsunami in south-east Asia. Bodies of victims have been recovered that can no longer be identified, but the long, difficult phase of identification is underway. Several victim identification teams from the police forces of European countries have been dispatched to the scene in a bid to identify the nationals of their countries. Given the unprecedented scale of the catastrophe, the task faced is enormous. In his capacity as current president of the Council of Justice and Home Affairs, Luc Frieden paid homage to the remarkable and particularly difficult work that the police and judicial teams from the European countries are currently performing in the disaster-stricken area.

The precise identification of victims is important for both humanitarian and legal reasons. In view of the large number of nationalities of the victims, the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the European Union considers it necessary to provide a European framework to the work of identifying victims who are nationals of European countries.

After the identification teams have completed their work, a coordination, exchange and follow-up mechanism must be implemented at European level in order to guarantee that all samples taken (DNA, dental reports and fingerprints) can be compared with data for persons reported missing throughout the European Union.

“The rapid and automated exchange of information provided for in the Hague programme on the area of freedom, security and justice adopted by the European Council of November 2004 should be implemented rapidly, if necessary on the basis of an ad-hoc decision that provides for a special exchange mechanism limited to this catastrophe in order to ensure that as many European victims as possible are identified while guaranteeing the necessary protection of data," declared the Luxembourg Minister for Justice.

Minister Frieden believes that, in view of the human drama in Asia, the European judicial and police systems should maximise their roles in coming to the aid of the victims and the families affected by disaster. He intends to assess the situation at the informal meeting of ministers for Justice and Home Affairs, over which he will preside, in Luxembourg at the end of January.