On Monday 27 November, the representatives of the European institutions met during a technical trialogue in order to continue negotiations on the reform of the governance model for Eurojust, the European agency for judicial cooperation.
The same day in the European Parliament's civil liberties committee, the rapporteur on this issue, Axel Voss (EPP, Germany), spoke about the main progress and stumbling blocks at the end of this meeting.
"We can say that we have made good progress", he said, stating that Articles 1 to 20 of the proposal have already been discussed even though the first trialogue only took place in early November (see EUROPE 11901). While some compromises have already been negotiated, there are still some areas in which the institutions have not managed to find an agreement, Voss stated.
As announced in a previous article (see EUROPE 11911), Voss spoke about good progress on the distribution of competences between Eurojust and the future European public prosecutor, which should be operational in 2020.
Still on the subject of competences, the issue of the agreement of the member state concerned when Eurojust conducts an investigation at the request of the Commission was also the subject of lengthy discussions, and opinions continue to differ. The Council is unsurprisingly in favour of such an option. In concrete terms, this would involve fixing a de facto right of veto for the Council or member state concerned, which would then have the possibility of opposing the investigation, Voss said. He added that technical meetings were still needed on this point.
On the way the president and vice-president of Eurojust are elected, a compromise seems to be taking shape, Voss said. A few questions nevertheless remain as regards the Council's proposal to set up a "financial compensation mechanism" for the member state of the national member elected, should there be need for the national office to be strengthened because of the increase in workload.
Discussions are not yet sufficiently advanced to be able to say there is an agreement on this issue, Voss stated, adding: "we have the impression, on the Parliament side, that we will be able to organise things very differently, rather than having to provide for a compensation mechanism".
Main sticking point is data protection. "We continue to find ourselves in a situation that is not satisfactory", Voss said. In his view, this point is very controversial, especially due to the fact it is linked to the report by Cornelia Ernst (GUE/NGL, Germany) on the revision of Regulation 45/2001 on the handling of personal data by the EU institutions and bodies.
The positions of the three institutions are a long way apart on the establishment of an own regime for Eurojust, Voss said. While the Council wants to include enforcement authorities in Regulation 45/2001, the European Parliament wants a "more integrated" approach.
"It is important not to have different interpretations between two legal texts", Voss warned, saying that the results should be awaited of the negotiations on the revision of Regulation 45/2001. According to a European source, the issue of data protection was not apparently addressed at this technical trialogue.
The Commission hopes that an agreement can be found on these different questions before the end of the year. At the European Parliament, a meeting between the shadow rapporteurs is due to take place next week with a view to the next trialogue (this time political) on 6 December. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)