EU: Council of Justice & Home Affairs
01 March 1995
(Brussels, 9-10 March 1995) Under the French Presidency this additional meeting of the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers "changed gear" and "stepped up the tempo to show that the third pillar is really working". French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua presided over the meeting which signed a "Joint Action" (under Article K.3.2.b of the Treaty on European Union) on the Europol Drugs Unit (EDU) replacing the Ministerial Agreement signed in Copenhagen in June 1993. This Joint Action takes into account the addition of the three new EU states and extends the role of the EDU from drug trafficking to include trafficking in nuclear materials, illegal immigration networks, and trafficking in vehicles. There is no provision for parliamentary accountability - national or European - and only the most basic data protection clauses with no mention of any appeal against incorrect information beyond national courts (ie: to the European Court of Justice). The "Joint Action" leaves open the distinct possibility that the EDU will be given additional roles prior to the implementation of the full Europol Convention (see Statewatch vol 4 no 6, and story in this bulletin).
"Simplified extradition"
The Ministers also signed a new Convention on "Simplified Extradition Procedure between Member states of the European Union", so-called "voluntary extradition". This Convention was not available to national parliaments to comment on and seems to have been produced to show that the "third pillar" was working. It concerns extradition where the individual concerned agrees to be extradited and foregoes rights under the Council of Europe Convention on Extradition - by renouncing entitlement to the speciality rule. By removing detailed case papers and court appearances it is intended to speed extradition within the EU. Ministers were vague as to how many cases this would affect talking of "around 30%", no figures or background reports were presented.
The Convention includes a significant change in the method of ratification. Unlike the Europol Convention which does not come into effect until it has been ratified by all 15 EU states - a process in most countries which involves parliamentary debate and approval - this Convention comes into effect 90 days after a state has ratified it. In effect when any two EU states have ratified it then it can come into effect between these two states while others may still be taking it through parliamentary procedures.
This Convention comes out of the informal meeting of Ministers of Justice in Limlette on 27-28 September 1993 where the primary objective set out was to get round the restrictions of the Council of Europe Convention on Extradition. The intention is to allow for the extradition of nationals of member states and to exclude:
"political offences as defined in Art 1 and 2 of the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism of the 27th January 1977 as a ground for the refusal of extradition"
A further Convention on "involuntary extradition" is currently being drafted.
The draft Europol Convention
The Council meeting returned yet again to the draft Europol Convention which it failed to agree on at its last meeting on 30 November under the German Presidency (see Statewatch vol 4 no 6). The version of the draft Europol Convention dated 10 October 1994 was revised again on 22 November 1994. This Council meeting considered a report from the French Presidency concerning two of several areas still to be resolved.
The areas of the Convention in dispute at the beginning of this year were: 1) the inclusion of terrorism in Europol's objectives, raised by Spain. This was resolved at the "informal" meeting of the Council in Paris on 26 January. It was agreed that terrorism should be included two years after the Convention has been ratified by all 15 EU states (probably in three to four years time); 2) a series of objections by France entered during the German Presidency,