Brussels, 17/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, the European Commission proposed that a Member State may take account of convictions against a person returned by another Member State for another case in criminal trials. “Nationally, the existence of previous criminal convictions can have an impact at a new criminal trial”, the Commission points out, hoping that in future, the same will be true, within certain limits, when the subsequent trial takes place in another Member State. The European Commission proposes that all Member States give previous convictions from other Member States, depending on the rules governing them, equivalent legal effects as national convictions, when a new trial is held on the basis of different facts. This will apply during the phase prior to the trial, during the trial and when sentence is passed, especially in relation to rules of procedure applicable to pre-trial detention, the nature of the criminal act, the type and level of sentence it carried or the rules on how the decision is carried out.
Notwithstanding, this principle will be applied only within a limited framework. In four sets of circumstances, the Member State in which the subsequent trial is taking place will be obliged to disregard a previous conviction- notably if, for the case which gave rise to the previous conviction, too much time had passed since then for the case to come to trial in that State or if the facts could have come under its jurisdiction. A Member State would also be able to disregard a previous conviction if the underlying facts do not constitute a criminal offence in its legislation. This possibility, however, would be waived for a list of 39 offences (from terrorism to motoring offences via extortion), for which the State would in any case be obliged to take account of the previous offence. The European Commission would like the proposal to be implemented by 31 December 2006.
This proposal was announced in the White Paper of 25 January on the exchange of information on criminal convictions in the European Union.