Brussels, 28/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - Ministers responsible for justice and home affairs will be meeting up on Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 March in Brussels for a formal meeting. No major decisions are expected to be taken at this meeting and it will, above all, provide an opportunity for progress to be made on “Justice and Home Affairs” policies under the next Commission and the post-Stockholm programme, about which there will be a number of communications in the middle of March, in the context of the European Council in June.
On Monday, the Swiss minister for asylum, immigration and the free movement of persons, Ms Simonetta Sommaruga and her counterparts will assess the situation created by the vote on 9 February (see EUROPE 11027). On Friday 28 February, different sources explained that this will just be a point of information, at the request of the Swiss government. The debate will not be public. One diplomatic source also explained that it would not be providing an opportunity to immediately re-examine Switzerland's participation in the Schengen agreement either but this same source did explain that it was obvious that it will be necessary to re-examine all the consequences.
A discussion is also planned on personal data protection, a dossier on which ministers will still be attempting to make more progress under the Greek presidency by examining new parts of the regulation. On Tuesday, ministers will be confirming the discussions held in Athens at the end of January and will focus on four themes: data pseudonyms (a technique used to replace information identifying an individual, such as name and social security number, by a pseudonym) and ways of processing sensitive data more easily, such as medical data, without their being any link with the exact identity of the person concerned; - data portability in the private sector (the transfer of data when, for example, social network or energy providers are changed, etc.); - the regulation's regional scope (all companies, even non-European ones providing services to Europeans) and; - obligations on data supervisors. One source indicated that, “the Greek presidency is carrying out its work seriously” and explained that completing reform of data protection rules could possibly be finished this year. Other sources thought, however, that the beginning of 2015 would perhaps be a more reasonable deadline for this. (SP)