Brussels, 05/12/2006 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, the justice and home affairs ministers of Italy, Portugal, Finland and Slovenia signed a declaration in which they committed themselves to joining the Prüm Treaty on cross-border cooperation to combat terrorism, crime and illegal immigration.
Belgium, Spain, Germany, France, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and Austria all signed this multilateral treaty (also called “Schengen III”) in Prüm in May 2005. The treaty is due to come into force in spring 2007. At the end of September, the ratification process had begun within the national parliaments of each of these countries, apart from France and Belgium.
The seven current signatory States and the four new countries also signed an agreement on the implementation of the Treaty to facilitate the exchange of DNA data, fingerprints and vehicle registration numbers among the parties. In their joint statement, the States also welcomed the announcement by the forthcoming German Presidency of the EU to bring forward an initiative to integrate the key elements of the Prüm Treaty into the acquis communautaire. Article 1 of the treaty allows for an initiative to be brought forward to transcribe arrangements from the treaty, at most three years after it has come into effect, into the European Union's legal framework, based on an assessment of the experience gained from the implementation of the treaty.
According to the data protection authorities of the signatories of the treaty, European arrangements on data protection are incomplete. They believe that, given the increase in exchange of data as part of police cooperation, where the mechanisms for the protection of persons differ from State to State, only the adoption of a framework-decision could create a sufficiently high and uniform level of guarantee in Europe. (bc)