Strasbourg, 15/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - By adopting the Roberta Angelilli Report (Alleanza nazionale) on Wednesday, the European Parliament approved, with a few amendments, France and Sweden's initiative (discussed at Thursday's JHA Council) in view of setting up a European crime prevention network, be it a question of petty crime (urban, juvenile or drug-related) or organised crime. The amendments essentially aim to set out the way the network should be run. Parliament would, in particular, like it to be organised around a committee and a secretariat, that it cover "all measures intended to reduce crime and the feeling of insecurity among the citizens" and that it "combine measures taken by public authorities, criminal justice bodies, local authorities, the private sector, charitable organisations, researchers and the public, with the support of the media".
"It is a question of exchanging information on good practices and not of replacing national choices relating to public safety policy", the rapporteur said during the debate, while pointing out that "Europe is in the process of working on achieving a European legal area". Carlos Coelho (Portuguese, EPP-ED) considered that, with as goal "to assess the different key methods to aim at in priority areas, this initiative could lead to greater international cooperation, even though it remains impeded by weighty structures". He recalled that this project of "intelligent prevention policy" was a follow-up to the political guidelines decided on at the Tampere Summit in October 1999. Ozan Ceyhun (German, Socialist Group) stressed that information exchange would enable the relevant authorities to take advantage of experiments undertaken in other countries and the expertise of structures such as Europol, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Eurojust, and placed emphasis on the need not to limit the powers of the network in its cooperation with candidate countries. Brian Crowley (Irish, UEN) drew Parliament's attention to the cross-border nature of cyber-crime.
Finally, Commissioner Antonio Vittorino backed the project, which, he said, was "a good exercise in the right of initiatives of Member States", and suggested that this "pilot project" focus rather on the prevention of petty crime.