Brussels, 21/11/2006 (Agence Europe) - The lack of resolve on the part of EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers could in time seriously jeopardise the credibility of the EU and that of national leaders, EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gijs de Vries said recently. “There is a clear risk that trust in the Union - and in national governments - may be undermined further”, Mr de Vries said on 15 November, regretting the slowness of the decision-making process at the Council of Ministers at the level of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Ministers. During a conference organised in Copenhagen on the future of Europe, Mr de Vries recalled that citizens expect a great deal of the EU when it comes to fighting organised crime and terrorism. He nonetheless criticised the attitude of ministers who, he said, regularly ignore the objectives set by the European Council.
“Under the current EU treaty there are clear limits to what the EU can do in practice to help protect our public against terrorism”, Gijs de Vries reports, referring to the unanimity requirement in the field of justice and home affairs (third pillar). To support this reflection, he gives a series of concrete examples: - It took over a year for ministers to unanimously appoint the director of Europol (2005). Early in 2006, ministers proved unable to reach unanimity about a modest proposal to facilitate hot pursuit by police forces across borders - something which many Member States already allow on a bilateral basis. The Council has still not managed the necessary unanimity to adopt a proposal on minimum procedural standards in criminal cases, although, according to the Hague programme, it should have been adopted by end 2005. “Even when the Council manages to reach unanimity it often takes years before national governments and parliaments implement the relevant legislation”, Mr de Vries deplores, giving as an example the case of the three additional protocols to the Europol Convention (unanimously adopted in 2000, 2002 and 2003), which still have to enter into force. In his view, another problems lies in the Swedish Parliament's tradition of requiring its government to submit implementing legislation before allowing it to agree to a Councl decision in the JHA field, which tends to slow down EU decisions by one to two years. Due to purely internal limits to the Treaty, the Commission and the Court of Justice have been unable to monitor implementation of framework decisions, conventions and other legal instruments and has even less power to ensure compliance by recalcitrant States. The rules inherent to the Treaty also considerably complicate the EU's capacity to enter into external agreements in matters related to the fight against terrorism, as illustrated by this year's ECJ ruling on the Passenger Name Record (PNR) agreement with the US.
Finally, Mr de Vries nonetheless explained that the role of the EU was to support the work of national authorities but not to replace them or to duplicate their work. “Terrorism is both international and local, and it must be countered at both levels”, he concluded. (bc)