Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers (1)
01 November 1997
It was perhaps as well that the meeting of the Council of Health Ministers took place on the same day as the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers (JHA Council), as few formal decisions were taken at the only JHA Council meeting held during the Luxembourg Presidency. The media in Brussels was totally preoccupied with the Formula 1 "tobacco sponsorship" row. The JHA Ministers agreed a "compromise" over the role of the European Court of Justice in the "Brussels II" Convention on matrimonial matters and agreement to allow the text of the Convention to be finalised in the near future drew little interest. Nor did their discussion of a Convention on the loss of driving licences which ended with the "experts" being asked to undertake further work - a EU euphemism for major differences have to be sorted out.
Indeed there were no final decisions on most of the major issues on the main Agenda: draft Convention on driving disqualifications, draft Convention on mutual assistance in criminal matters, draft Joint Action to create a judicial contact network, draft Joint Action on making it a criminal offence to participate in a criminal organisation, draft Resolution adopting a strategic programme for the customs administrations (third pillar aspects), the "influx of immigrants from Iraq", and the draft Convention concerning the establishment of "Eurodac" for the comparison of fingerprints of applicants for asylum.
The JHA Council did agree reports on: a) terrorism (internal and external threats), b) the state of organised crime in 1996, c) reports to be considered by the Luxembourg Summit on the fight against drugs, d) the extension of the role of Europol on the "trade in human beings" to include activities for the production, sale and distribution of pedopornographic material.
Summary of main discussions
Draft Convention on mutual assistance in criminal matters: the provisions of this draft Convention were summarised at length in Statewatch vol 7 nos 4 & 5). The JHA Council decided to split the draft Convention into a) the main Convention on which agreement is expected to be reached during the UK Presidency (January-June 1998) and b) the contentious issues on the interception of telecommunications (the EU-FBI surveillance of phones calls, e-mails and faxes), seizure of objects and the controlled delivery of drugs - these are now to be dealt with in a separate Protocol to the Convention with a target date for agreement in 18 months time (during the German Presidency in the first half of 1999).
Draft Joint Action on making it a criminal offence to participate in a criminal organisation: the object of the Joint Action is to replace the multitude of definitions of "organised crime" with one which will apply in all EU Member States. A number of issues are outstanding. First, a disagreement between Spain and the UK which reflects the different legal systems. The UK position is to leave the "offences" covered undefined so that its conspiracy laws could be used where two or more people conspire to commit an offence or for offences carrying sentences of three years or more. Spain wants the limit to be lowered to only 12 months in line with the 1996 Convention on Extradition. Second, Belgium wanted the definition to include "by using intimidation, threats, violence, fraudulent manoeuvres or corruption", in other words for it to be more strictly defined. This was rejected by the JHA Council and Belgium is maintaining a parliamentary reserve and may, in addition, add a declaration to the effect that this is how it will interpret any definition. Another stumbling block was disagreement over extending "participation" in a criminal organisation to include lawyers and accountants and others where they act intentionally and with the knowledge that they contribute to the "success" of the criminal organisation. A draft of the Joint Action contained the following
Articles:
"Article 1
Within the meaning of this<