Brussels, 02/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's Citizens' Freedoms Committee is calling on the plenary session to approve the setting up of a network of contact points in Member States of people responsible for combating the fight against people organising genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. The report by Timothy Kirkhope (British Conservative) that was adopted by 30 votes in favour with 2 abstentions will be presented for debate on Monday 8 April to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It endorses the outlines of the proposal put forward by the Netherlands in August 2001 to set up in each Member State a contact point for war crimes in order to facilitate mutual co-operation in research into war crimes in the various Member States. The Netherlands justify the proposal on the grounds that judicial procedures have taken on greater significance in this domain since the proposal would enable information to be transmitted more rapidly. The procedure would be accompanied by derogations with the option of refusing to allow direct transmission of information should this jeopardise a case currently underway or if national law for the case in question requires a specific legal procedure to be used. The Kirkhope report focuses on human rights and the rights of the defence, calling for co-operation to be subject to police and judicial control and wanting refusal to supply information to be authorised if it risks damaging the rights of an individual to defence.
The European Parliament is simply being consulted in this case so its opinion is not binding. The Council has not yet decided on the proposal since several countries (including France and Germany) question its utility since co-operation in this area is already covered elsewhere.