EU: JHA CouncilSeptember 1998
01 September 1998
The first meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA Council) under the Austrian Presidency was a lacklustre affair. The agenda was drawn up on 17 July, over two months prior to the meeting. Little was agreed and the Ministers finished their business in the morning and were on their way home by early afternoon.
Two of the main items for discussion were the interception of telecommunications Articles in the draft Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance and the inclusion of "illegal immigrants" in the planned Eurodac fingerprint database.
Protocol on "illegal immigrants"
There is now open acceptance that the Dublin Convention which only came into operation last autumn - over seven years after it was signed - is going to have to be amended. In the short term the discussion on Eurodac - also to be set up under a Convention which has to be ratified by EU national parliaments - deflects attention from the Dublin Convention, "Eurodac would be of great importance in supporting the operation of the 1990 Dublin Convention" (Council press release).
At the JHA Council in May the EU governments agreed that the Eurodac fingerprint database should be extended from asylum seekers to include "illegal immigrants". However, the "illegal immigrant" clauses are to be in a Protocol attached to the Convention - a ploy intended to separate the necessary ratification of both by national parliaments.
The majority view in the JHA Council is that "illegal immigrants" should only comprise people who are apprehended in areas close to borders (which is some cases is up to 30 kilometres). But "some delegations" want to include anyone who has crossed a border "illegally" and is caught in an EU member state.
Another issue on the draft Eurodac Convention was the length of time fingerprints should be held for. A "large majority" wanted a period of 1 year, and "one delegation favoured a three year period". The agreed compromise? A two year period.
The questions of the funding and management for the Eurodac central unit, the role of the Court of Justice to give preliminary rulings, and "the problem of the territorial scope of the Convention" (a euphemism for the long-standing dispute between the UK and Spain over the status of Gibraltar) remain outstanding.
When data protection was "discussed substantively" on 16 December 1997 in the working group "it was concluded that all but two delegations plus the Commission did not favour a specific data protection provision in the draft Convention."
Europol
Although the Europol Convention came into force on 1 October Europol cannot become operational because, under Article 45 of the Convention, nine specified measures have to be adopted. In addition only 10 member states (five have not: Spain, France, Italy, Luxembourg and Portugal) have ratified the "Protocol on the privileges and immunities of Europol".
One of the issues still to be settled is the status of the Joint Supervisory Body (JSB), which is to be comprised of data protection officials from each member state. Its powers, as already agreed, are limited under the Convention to making "complaints" to the Director of Europol (Article 24), it has no powers of enforcement. Now a row has broken out between France and Germany over the "legal character" of the JSB. This boils down to Germany wanting the Joint Supervisory Body's meeting being open to the public unless there is some specific reason for a closed-doors session and France insisting that its deliberations should be held behind closed doors.
The issue was due to be discussed in COREPER on 21 October but was taken off the agenda because there was no chance of resolving the dispute.
Germany is arguing that the JSB is the only means available to citizens to complain about Europol's activities, "Germany feels that we have to take account of the fact that this body is acting like some kind of court and normal court procee