Date of release : 26-01-2005

Policy area : Justice and Home Affairs Justice and Home Affairs

Event : Informal Meeting of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers

At a press briefing on the eve of the informal ministerial meeting of the Luxembourg Presidency, Luc Frieden, the Minister for Justice and current President of the Council of Justice and Home Affairs, outlined the five priorities on which the work of the Presidency will focus until June 2005.

These five priorities, which will be part of the steps established for the "Hague Programme" adopted by the European Council of 4 and 5 November 2004, are a European security policy which will result in a new form of operational police cooperation, the exchange of information between the judicial authorities and the police, increased harmonisation of criminal legislation, the fight against terrorism and the fight against organised crime in cooperation with third countries.

On the subject of European security policy, Minister Frieden confirmed that there is limited collaboration between European police forces, but that there is not a true criminal policy being carried out by European police. The minister would like the European Union "to be provided with efficient and transparent instruments for developing systematic police cooperation". To this end, a Permanent Committee on Internal Security will be put in place as called for in the new Constitutional Treaty. The tasks of the committee will be discussed during the informal meeting of 28 and 29 January.

Luc Frieden placed the exchange of information between the police forces and the judicial authorities under the aegis of the " principle of availability" . "Information available to one police force should be available to other police forces, and a national court decision should be available to all the judicial authorities in the EU", stated the minister, adding that "the discussions on the exchange and the type of information to be exchanged will be long and difficult." The minister, who wants to go beyond the exchange of national criminal records and implement European criminal records, underlined the importance of exchanging information in the crime prevention.

Within the framework of the discussion on mutual recognition of criminal sentences by national court in the EU, the minister came out in favour of the approximation of legisltion. The minister would consider such a reconciliation to be a supplementary guarantee of the rights for european citizens.

Mr Frieden described terrorism as the "scourge of free and open societies", which terrorists wish to destroy. He called the plan of terrorism action plan an "ambitious project", and emphasised the need to implement anti-terrorist devices in each Member State. Citing Islamist terrorism as an example, which "is not based on a large global organisation, but rather consists of small groups spread around the world whose relationships with each other are occasional and targeted", he explained that some arrests have been made possible thanks to anti-terrorism devices.

Finally, Luc Frieden emphasised that penal justice and criminal policies do not just affect the Member States of the EU, but it also involves relations in this area with third countries, such as the US, the Western Balkans, Russia, Ukraine and Switzerland.

The minister closed by stating that "if the Luxembourg Presidency manages to advance the dossiers of police cooperation and the exchange of information between the police forces and the ministries of justice of the Member States, that alone would be a great success."