Brussels, 11/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Luxembourg on 5 and 6 June, the ministers and representatives for Justice and Home Affairs did their homework and submitted their contributions on the future of the justice and home affairs policies to the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, ahead of the summit of 26 and 27 June. More specifically, the Greek Presidency summed up the ministers' contributions in a letter to President Van Rompuy, with a view to feeding into the “strategic guidelines” to be put before the European leaders.
What do the ministers want for the next five years? Not radical action, judging from the summary of the Greek Presidency, but consolidation of “progress made to date in the field of JHA” and “greater confidence and closer links between the various stakeholders”, the Presidency writes. The member states were also positive about the need to improve the link between the domestic and external policies of the EU, in order to provide a better response to a complex geopolitical situation, security problems in constant evolution and the consequences of the global economic crisis.
On the principles and general issues, “the member states take the view that the Stockholm programme has succeeded in laying the first legislative stone to make the area of freedom, security and justice stronger” and it is “now necessary to lay emphasis on the quality of legislation and its coherent implementation”. Certain member states proposed an examination of the acquis, which could lead to the annulment of unnecessary or redundant acts, the Presidency continues. Any new initiative should respond to “genuine needs, taking due account of the principle of solidarity, and should be carefully evaluated from a financial and operational point of view”, the text adds, but also from the point of view of the principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and the sharing of responsibility.
On the external dimension, the focus should be on dialogue and global partnerships with third countries, involving a variety of instruments and based on the principle of positive conditionality (“more for more”).
Other areas of work: the border management and returns policies, which are deemed “necessary to ensure the credibility and integrity of the area of freedom, security and justice”, and the convergence of national practices in the implementation of the common European asylum regime were seen as priorities. The “principle of solidarity has been reaffirmed”, said the Presidency, as has the prospect of finding new ways of incarnating solidarity, in particular by means of burden-sharing mechanisms due to the considerable pressure on the external borders of certain member states. Italy, which takes over the Presidency of the EU on 1 July, has already stated that growth and immigration would be the main priorities of its term. (SP)