The European Parliament’s negotiator, Birgit Sippel (S&D, Germany), briefed the Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE), on Tuesday 23 March, on the interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogues’) regarding the legislative proposals to facilitate access to electronic evidence in criminal investigations (see EUROPE 12003/18).
The second ‘trilogue’, which took place on 18 March, registered a “persistent disagreement between EU Council and Parliament” as regards the question of reimbursement of the costs for service providers in enforcing European orders to produce or preserve electronic evidence, she reported.
This is very important for the European Parliament, because service providers with this new legislation will be obliged to work with a numerous number of competent authorities from different Member States and also in a very short time, she explained.
The Parliament is thus asking for harmonisation of reimbursement schemes, including the possibility for SMEs to also request the reimbursement in executing Member States – a harmonisation which the EU Council strongly opposes.
For the rest, an interim agreement could be registered on part of the definition of service providers and also parts of definition of the data categories, she announced.
The next ‘trilogue’ is provisionally scheduled for 20 May, with a number of interinstitutional technical meetings to take place in between. In particular, Ms Sippel confirmed that the thorny issue of notification will be the next topic to be discussed (see EUROPE 12679/17).
“As this is the core element of the proposal, I would like to underline again that Parliament proposed a multilayered notification system and also introduced a special regime for Member States subject to an Article 7 procedure”, she recalled.
During the discussion, the other political groups - even those who voted against Ms Sippel’s report – asked her to “bare her teeth” in defending the Parliaments position during the negotiations as a minimum guarantee. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)