Stockholm, 16/07/2009 (Agence Europe) - EU ministers for home affairs want European policies to be more collaborative on the ground, by way of existing structures and new information exchange techniques. At an informal meeting in Sweden, the Swedish minister of justice, Beatrice Ask, indicated: “We have significantly highlighted the need to improve cooperation in the fight against cross-border crime, such as organised crime, human trafficking, child sexual exploitation and pornography, as well as tax evasion”. Ms Ask underlined the need to develop greater specialisation in the police force and affirmed that “collaboration between the different police forces, prosecutors and customs agents is needed, as well as more training for them”.
During the meeting, the German secretary of state, Peter Altmaier, proposed establishing a European Police Code that would merge European legislation (Schengen, Prüm etc). Minister Ask also underscored Union agency evaluation (Europol and Eurojust etc) and declared: “A whole range of agencies exist. If they were better integrated, greater efficiency from them would be obtained…We must improve the use of the instruments that already exist”.
Most ministers consider that the time has now come to develop the instruments implemented over recent years, without having to create new ones. In this respect, Minister Ask announced that an informal meeting of home affairs ministers would be held on 1 October with Europol, in an effort to outline this agency's future goals. The agency will have greater powers as from next year. Ms Ask also stated that all ministers had highlighted the importance of having a better information management system. In this context, the European commissioner for justice, freedom and security, Jacques Barrot, pointed out that he had recently proposed a project for creating an agency for taking charge of the operational management of large scale intelligence, which would manage, for example, the Second Generation Information System (Sis II), the Visa Information System and Eurodac, the database containing asylum seekers' digital imprints (EUROPE 9928). The commissioner emphasised that “our objective is for the police forces on the ground in each country to know how to use these information systems”. So far, Estonia has expressed an interest in hosting this agency, as well as France. The French secretary of state for home affairs, Alain Marleix, suggested to a select number of journalists that “such a development would appear normal in Strasbourg” because it is already the seat of the SIS. France also, once again, defended the idea of developing a European Passenger Name Record system (PNR). Other countries, such as Slovenia and Finland, supported the idea of creating an entry-exit system in the EU to better control illegal immigration. Both the commissioner and the Swedish minister underlined the need to find a “balance” between repressive measures and the protection of fundamental rights. Mr Barrot explained that “the problem of communicating information and intelligence is related to the trust citizens have in how this is used by the police force”. Barrot averred that in this context, two principles must be respected: the end result (for what and for whom will this data be used) and proportionality (use of this data will depend on the condition of there being a real need for it). Ministers also sent out a clear message to their colleagues at the foreign office that security should now systematically be discussed during meetings between the EU and third countries. Ms Ask explained that all the ministers had agreed on the need to implement “a clear cooperation strategy” with third countries, particularly candidate and neighbouring countries, as well as other important partners. Mr Barrot declared: “We need European diplomacy to integrate security issues, particularly during summits with the US and Russia”. To this effect, a specific chapter on external relations in the Stockholm Programme is expected to be elaborated.
Commissioner Barrot also touched on the subject of European cooperation in civil protection questions and pointed out that the first stage in this respect consists of “each member state, in the event of a serious crisis, making material readily available, on the condition that it is interoperable and people can communicate with each other. Therefore, information is necessary”. On the other hand, it is difficult to know what common resources the police forces should be provided with, explained the commissioner. Ministers will continue with negotiations on the Stockholm programme, a new five yearly work programme, which aims to foster cooperation in the arena of justice and home affairs (EUROPE 9918). (B.C./transl.rh)