Santiago de Compostela, 15/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - The acting President of the Council Angel Acebes said that they had managed to meet all the meeting's objectives, as he left the informal Justice and Home Affairs Council in Santiago de Compostela. The Council might have been an informal one, but it was "eminently fruitful", explained Commissioner Antonio Vitorino. An initial very general agreement had been reached on the mandate for the negotiations with the United States and some progress was made in terms of visiting rights on Friday on top of the results of the Thursday meeting (see yesterday's EUROPE, pp 7/8) namely the early implementation of the European arrest warrant in six or seven countries and the agreement in principle on the method to be followed to achieve EU policy on combating illegal immigration. Ministers also pursued their discussion on how to harmonise penal sanctions. The discussion over Europol remained tense despite progress on participation in investigations. The only real glitch was the rather rapid way the Spanish Presidency handled the decision on the arrest warrant which did not go down well with all the other countries. The minister stressed that the results would need to be fleshed out in future Council meetings.
United States. The Spanish Presidency ambitiously wants a mandate to be prepared in the very near future for the negotiations with the United States over judicial cooperation. Setting a detailed mandate could well take time, however, even if there is already broad agreement on the outlines. The negotiations will cover terrorism but also other serious crimes and will look at both judicial co-operation and extradition, explained Angel Acebes. The agreement would of course respect Member States' Constitutions, he said, particularly concerning the death penalty. France also wants the danger of people being locked up until the end of their days to be ruled out before anyone is extradited. Scandinavian countries do not like the idea of an extradition agreement and are placing particular emphasis on respect for human rights. Others, like Germany, mentioned the need for a good framework for the exchanges of personal data. The Presidency highlighted the need for such an agreement, that the EU decided to negotiate after the 11 September attacks. Mr Acebes claimed it was logical for international co-operation to be the subject of a common agreement if they built a European area of justice and home affairs. The bilateral agreements signed by every Member State with the US would remain in force, he said, and negotiations could be launched as soon as the Presidency had been given a mandate. The first meeting with the US was held in Madrid on 8 February. The Presidency did not want to set a deadline for the signing of an agreement, with Mr Acebes saying they would take all the time that was necessary, adding it would be a preliminary agreement and there was a whole series of obstacles to be overcome.
Harmonising sentencing. The Ministers confirmed that they want to change the way sentencing is harmonised. The Council will continue working on the minimum penalty for the most serious crimes (minimum maximum) by changing from one stages of one year to a range of years. The new system will make it easier to adopt harmonisation decisions, but will lead to a lesser degree of harmonisation. Germany sees this as a good transition model, but in the long-term, it would be necessary to take account of the time actually spent in prison, announced German minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin. A comparative study on the effective duration of sentences has been launched.
Visiting rights. The Ministers generally agreed that the judge of the country where a child normally lives should be the only judge with power to decide on appeal cases. In April the Commission will unveil a new proposal attempting to summarise the various positions. The French justice minister, Marylise Lebranchu, said she was "optimistic" because Germany (which has disagreed with France for a long time on this issue) was being more flexible. Another Franco-German meeting will be held at the beginning of March. Ms Lebranchu also wants to meet her British counterpart, who remains very reluctant to go beyond The Hague Convention.
European arrest warrant. On Thursday evening, the Presidency announced that Germany had joined the other six countries that announced in the morning that they would be implementing the European arrest warrant early. The German justice minister was particularly unhappy that the decision had been taken before she had been properly informed of it and before her arrival at the Council meeting. Germany announced that it too was planning to implement the European arrest warrant as soon as it could, at the beginning of 2003 if possible.
The European list of terrorist organisations was open and must be regularly reviewed, and this would be done at the end of the Spanish Presidency, explained interior minister Mariano Rajoy.