Luxembourg, 23/10/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 23 October, the European justice ministers gave their blessing to the conclusion of two transatlantic agreements on legal cooperation and extradition. Further to the attacks of 11 September 2001, the member states agreed that the European Union, together with the United States, would look into ways of facilitating criminal legal cooperation, in order to fight terrorism, and the extradition of persons suspected of having links to terrorism. Further to these negotiations, the agreements were signed on behalf of the European Union on 25 June 2003, but a number of member states then took their time to ratify them. As procedures at internal level are complete, the Presidency of the EU has now been authorised to conclude these agreements. The ratification instruments will be exchanged at the occasion of the "Justice and Home Affairs" ministerial meeting between the EU and the United States, which will be held in Washington on 28 October. The agreements will enter into force on 1 February 2010. As regards the substance, the legal cooperation agreement contains a number of major steps forward: on banking secrecy, it will no longer be possible to refuse assistance on the grounds of banking secrecy, joint investigation teams can be created and operate on the territory of the United States and of the member states and the use of new technologies (videoconference, faxes, e-mail) is envisaged to facilitate the procedures. The extradition agreement simplifies the transmission and authentication of extradition applications and provisional arrest requests. Where the bilateral treaties do not provide for this, the agreement implements simplified procedures in the event of the consent of the wanted person. As most of the national parliaments insisted, the guarantees regarding the application of the death penalty have been satisfied, meaning that extradition will not take place if the wanted person is at risk of being put to death. (B.C./transl.fl)