In a document dated 23 March, the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council has collected the contributions of the Member States regarding their respective positions on the establishment of a High-Level Expert Group on Access to Data. Its role would be to help identify data access challenges and recommend measures to address them in the fight against crime.
Some of the Member States that commented seem to agree on the importance of taking stock of the most urgent issues. This will allow, in Belgium’s view, “to decide if and how the concept of a new High-Level Expert Group is the best way to proceed”.
Among the important topics, the Czech Republic believes that the focus of the working group should be on issues related to access to encrypted communications and encrypted static data, on improving international cooperation to ensure access to evidence, on data retention and on jurisdictional issues related to the loss of location.
According to the French perspective, the work should initially focus on identifying the various European texts, “all sectors included, existing or under discussion, which are related to the subject of access to data”. Following this, the expert group could take the form of a body in which the Council of the EU is “strongly involved” in how the work is carried out.
For other countries, such as the Netherlands, the involvement of “many relevant stakeholders, including non-institutional ones, is crucial”. However, the Dutch delegation suggests that sub-groups should be set up to avoid that the distant views of stakeholders lead to “analyses and proposals that are too abstract or procedural to be genuinely helpful”.
See the document: https://aeur.eu/f/65t (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)