Brussels, 17/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers who will meet at the JHA Council in Brussels on 21 February are expected to reach an agreement without debate on the European Injunction to Pay Procedure and on the conclusions on the visa reciprocity mechanism. Ministers will also discuss the Framework Decision on the European Evidence Warrant, the recent amended draft regulation from the Commission on non-contractual obligations (Rome II) and drawing up a list of safe countries in relation to asylum requests.
The Council is expected firstly to approve, without discussion, the text on the draft regulation on the European Injunction to Pay Procedure (co-decision, first reading). Ministers agreed at the start of December 2005 (see EUROPE 9082) on a general approach. It will only remain for the lawyer-linguist service to review the text prior to establishing a common position.
Ministers will also adopt the conclusions on the visa reciprocity mechanism, in which the Council calls on the Commission to increase its efforts to achieve total reciprocity with several third countries (United States, Australia and Canada). The Council will also ask the Commission to show in the report it will submit in June the progress made in reaching such an outcome, as well as possible measures to be taken against these three countries if reciprocity cannot be made effective. Franco Frattini said in January that no tangible progress had been made towards visa exemption for the citizens of the EU as a whole in these three important partner countries (see EUROPE 9110).
Ministers will again discuss the draft framework decision on the European Evidence Warrant the main aim of which is to make it easier to obtain from other countries objects, documents and data in legal inquiries. No common general approach was reached during the December Council (see EUROPE 9082). Discussions will focus mainly on the definition of offences, privileges and immunities and on appropriate execution measures. The most controversial issue, the inclusion in the proposal of a territoriality clause, will be discussed at a later date. If such a clause were included, the text would de facto lose a large part of its power since States could use this every time they judged it necessary.
Commissioner Franco Frattini will put to the Justice Ministers the amended proposal for a regulation on non-contractual obligations (EUROPE 9133), which does away with the articles relating to defamation in the press (Article 6) and those on damage to third parties during road accidents. An open discussion is due to follow during which Ministers may, or may not, come down on the side of countries (France, United Kingdom, Sweden and Portugal) that have already stated they are in favour of simply deleting Article 6.
Mr Frattini is, moreover, to present the communication published on Friday by the Commission on a European common asylum scheme (see related article). The Council is expected to establish a working group to examine the Commission's approach in detail.
Another key theme to be developed at the JHA Council will be the creation of a list of safe countries towards which illegal immigrants found on European soil may be sent. This idea was brought up by French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy during the JHA Council mid-January (EUROPE 9109). Commissioner Franco Frattini will be explaining the procedure to be followed for putting such a proposal into practice. The Commission has already called on Member States to provide their national lists of safe countries. The idea is to work on this list in order to find a common denominator. Such a list had been drawn up in 2004 under Dutch Presidency (EUROPE 8824). At the time, a list of seven African countries considered potentially safe were more or less the subject of a compromise: Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Senegal, Mali and Mauritius.