Brussels, 03/07/2006 (Agence Europe) - Europe must develop a new ambition in the field of justice and security by 2025, Luxembourg Minister for Justice Luc Frieden said in Luxembourg on Saturday when speaking before students at the American Sacred Heart University on the occasion of receiving the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. Considering that Europe can provide real added value to Member States and their citizens in this field, Mr Frieden suggested a series of innovative measures. The doyen of EU justice ministers first of all urged for the establishment of a European criminal code for serious cross-border offences. “A certain degree of harmonisation of criminal law is a prerequisite for mutual recognition to work”, Luc Frieden said, alluding to the difficulties encountered by the European arrest warrant and the European evidence warrant. In the field of civil law, he was in favour of common rules regarding the cross-border effects and recognition of, for instance, marriages, partnerships and divorces. “We need a European thinking for our police forces”, Mr Frieden stressed, advocating the abolition of borders for police in certain situations, the interconnection of police databanks, the creation of a European judicial police for certain crossborder crimes and the constitution of a European border guard. He also suggested reforms of decision-making mechanisms and took a stance in favour of a presidency elected every two to three years at the Council of Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs, and in favour of designating one or more political leaders who should have to task to present the objectives for justice and home affairs in the year 2025. While stressing that the ambition of Europe should be that of all Member States, Luc Frieden recalled that some pilot projects or enhanced cooperation may be useful for moving forward, on the dual condition that they are carried by States independently of their size and that they are open to all. The minister also aspired to closer partnership with the neighbours of Europe, Russia and the United States in the field of external and internal security, which are, he says, closely linked. In this context, he hoped that in twenty years from now all the States of Europe would be part of the European Union. “We need to end the enlargement debate”, Luc Frieden said, adding that, in his view, “the political limit of the EU should be in line with the geographic limit of Europe”.