With the vote initially scheduled for 12 October postponed by request of the S&D, Greens/EFA and ALDE groups, to secure extra time to agree on the 213 amendments tabled to the report by Axel Voss (EPP, Germany), the committee on civil liberties (LIBE) of the European Parliament will finally approve its position on the reform of Eurojust, the European judicial cooperation agency, on Thursday 19 October.
Readers may recall that this reform, presented in July 2013, aims to increase Eurojust's effectiveness by establishing a new model of governance (see EUROPE 10890). As this is closely related to the creation of the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) - the new structure to tackle fraud against the financial interests of the EU - the Parliament had to wait for discussions at the Council on creating the new body to end before it could take position. The draft Voss report broadly follows the lines of the Council's partial political agreement in principle ('general orientation'), which was reached in March 2015 (see EUROPE 11274).
On 5 October, during an examination of the amendments at the LIBE committee, the rapporteur noted considerable progress, but stated that negotiations continued between the political groups on two points.
Relations with the EPPO. Stressing that the creation of the EPPO could lead to a clash of competences with Eurojust, the rapporteur called for a clear distinction between the two agencies. He said that care must be taken to avoid any hierarchy, either way. This was echoed by Social Democrat Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann (Germany), who argued in favour of avoiding both duplications and gaps.
In this context, the Greens/EFA group proposed an amendment giving the EPPO voting rights at the Eurojust College in all discussions concerning it. The ALDE group proposed giving Eurojust a right of initiative - on which there is by no means unanimity. Psychologically, if we agree on such a right, this could create concerns of transfers of competences and cause the member states to come to the European level even less frequently in the framework of this cooperation, the rapporteur explained.
Data protection. 97 amendments have been tabled on this matter alone. Adopting the distinction brought in by the Council between operational data and administrative data of a personal nature, the rapporteur believes the regulation should contain data protection provisions when these are processed for operational purposes. As regards administrative data of a personal nature held by Eurojust, he proposes lining up on the regime in place for Europol and applying Regulation 45/20011, which covers all agencies.
This is a key point for the ALDE and Greens groups, both of which are in favour of the single application of Regulation 45/20011, to avoid every agency having its own regime. Given the differences of opinion, the rapporteur announced that he would present a compromise, but stressed the need to avoid making the administrative burden on agencies any heavier.
Although the S&D, ALDE, Greens/EFA and EFDD shadow rapporteurs were optimistic at this session for the continuation of the negotiations, the ENF group has issued a proposal to reject the Commission's draft regulation, arguing that the new structure does not respect the principle of subsidiarity. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)