Brussels, 24/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 23 February, the Commission adopted its communication on disqualifications arising from criminal convictions, seeking to improve the flow of information between Member States since people convicted of criminal offences are sometimes banned from exercising certain rights or activities. At European Union level, there exists a wide range of disqualification measures. These may be the automatic consequence of a conviction or be ordered by a court or by an administrative authority. Even where information is available, it is not always usable since the absence of harmonisation itself constitutes a barrier to mutual recognition. The Commission has, therefore, opted for an approach that seeks to improve the flow of information on convictions recorded in national court records (see EUROPE 9114). Exhaustive access to information on convictions handed down in the other Member States should allow better use to be made of the information, in particular to ascertain whether a person should be given access to certain professions or activities. The specific case of disqualification arising from criminal conviction was instituted by Belgium following the Fourniret child abuse case in summer 2004. Although found guilty in France of raping under-age children, Michel Fourniret later worked in a school canteen in Belgium after receiving a certificate of good behaviour. States felt the strict control of this information, which is aimed not only at legal but also administrative authorities, necessary. They expressed their preference for a sectoral approach proposing that only disqualifications arising from acts of paedophilia, road traffic offences or drug trafficking should have mutual recognition. The Commission followed the same approach. It seeks ultimately to create a “European index”, a system allowing automatic and direct access to information to ascertain if a person has a conviction in order to determine the State in which the person has a criminal record. In 2006 further proposals with regard to third country nationals will be advanced.