On 10 June in Luxembourg, the Ministers for Home Affairs of the EU Member States will be called upon to adopt a series of general approaches on key issues relating to police cooperation and the strengthening of the Schengen area.
The French Presidency of the Council of the EU aims in particular to obtain a political green light on the project to reform the Schengen area and on the proposal for a Prüm II Regulation on the automated exchange of data in the framework of police cooperation. This proposal is part of a new code of police cooperation which also includes a recommendation on operational police cooperation and a Directive on information exchange between law enforcement authorities of the Member States.
While a draft general approach on the reform of the Schengen area will be discussed on 1 June by the national ambassadors of the Member States to the EU (see related article), they have already supported on 11 May the outline of the general approach on the Prüm II Regulation, according to a French Presidency document, which explains the main points. The proposal was discussed at nine meetings of the working group and two meetings of the group of advisers. The issue of including Prüm II in the Schengen acquis was also raised.
On 11 May, Member States broadly supported a compromise text that, for example, revised the legal basis to extend it to judicial cooperation in criminal matters, says the document seen by EUROPE. The framework and scope of Prüm II have been clarified. “The Prüm II Regulation will establish the rules and conditions for the automated comparison of certain categories of data for the prevention, detection and investigation of criminal offences, as well as the procedures to be followed in case of a match. The Directive on Information Exchange will apply to all exchanges outside the Prüm II framework”.
Prüm II may be used for the purposes of searching for missing persons and identifying unidentified human remains, as proposed by the Commission. In addition, the number of categories of data that can be exchanged in an automated way has “been increased with three new categories: facial images (in addition to DNA profiles and fingerprint data), driving licence data (in addition to vehicle registration data) and police records”.
Specific provisions on the exchange of data on driving licences
On driving licences, the EU Council seems to go further than the Commission, which had foreseen in December that Member States could use “the European Car and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris)” for the purpose of automated consultation of vehicle registration data.
In the text submitted to the Ministers, “it has been clarified that the exchange of data concerning driving licence data will be based on the RESPER network (Driving Licences Network). For reasons of proportionality, the provision of a photograph of the licence, if available, will be optional. Furthermore, searches using personal data will only be possible if they are already authorised by the national law of the requested Member State”.
The text also covers the automatic exchange of police records, which will be done via EPRIS (European Police Records Index System).
The role of Europol is also clarified in the context of Prüm II. Europol “will be able to launch queries in national databases using data transmitted by third States and always within the framework of the Agency’s mandate, as set out in the Europol Regulation. In return, Europol will make available to Member States biometric data obtained through third States for automated comparisons”.
Link to the Prüm II text (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/1uw (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)