The EU27 ministers for Home Affairs and Migration will meet this Thursday 20 July in Logroño, Spain, for an informal meeting on the fight against organised crime and progress on the Pact on Migration and Asylum.
There will also be a discussion on access to communications data by European police forces in the morning, as well as a discussion on the impact of the war in Ukraine on internal security in the EU.
The Spanish Presidency of the EU Council has prepared a number of discussion documents and questions to guide the debate.
On the controversial subject of police access to electronic communications and digital data, the Spanish Presidency wants to achieve a framework that respects fundamental rights, the right to privacy and the investigative work of police forces.
In particular, it will sound out the ministers on their appetite for new legislation on the retention of telecommunications data, which has been the subject of several stringent rulings by the Court of Justice of the EU.
It will therefore ask them two questions: “do ministers agree that a basis should be laid for a new proposal for European rules on retention of and access to electronic communications metadata, overcoming the current situation resulting from the invalidation of the 2006 Directive?”.
It will also ask them, on the technical details of this access to data, whether it is appropriate to engage with industry and, “in particular, to encourage cooperation and joint work with industry to promote not only privacy by design, but also the development of capabilities to enable legal access to information”. In its note, the Presidency considers that the extensive use of end-to-end encrypted communications is one of the major challenges facing police forces.
Rapidly open negotiations with the European Parliament on the ‘Crisis’ Regulation
On the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’, the Presidency will focus on the regulation on the management of situations of crisis and force majeure and the instrumentalisation of migration (see EUROPE 13224/13).
It will ask the ministers how the efforts made on the external dimension of migration can help to prevent these exceptional situations and whether it is possible to start trilogue meetings with the European Parliament before the end of the summer, according to the discussion note.
In this configuration, the EU Council is expected to adopt its mandate very quickly, which is what Parliament is asking it to do in order to make progress on the rest of the texts of the ‘Pact’.
“The Crisis Regulation is essential for at least three reasons. First, to regulate the vast majority of extraordinary migratory situations (i.e., those not governed by AMMR); second, to complete the Pact with a regulation that strikes the right balance between responsibility and solidarity for this type of situation. Finally, because we have committed to the European Parliament to making progress on all elements of the Pact in accordance with a joint roadmap”, explains Madrid in its note.
“At the same time, however, the very nature of extraordinary situations means that they will often take the form of unforeseen events. There will be cases where the European response may require ad hoc action by the Council, as we have already experienced in previous years”, the Presidency also states, even if, as far as possible, the future Pact “should provide for better formulas that increase the predictability of the response to be adopted”.
Links to discussion documents: https://aeur.eu/f/860 ; https://aeur.eu/f/861 ; https://aeur.eu/f/862 ; https://aeur.eu/f/863 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)