EU: Justice and Home Affairs Councils 4 & 29 October
01 September 1999
During October there were two meetings of the Justice and Home Affairs Council in Luxembourg. The first, on 4 October was scheduled for two days and in the event only lasted until lunch-time on the first day. It included two "non-events" - the Final Report of the High Level Group on Asylum and Migration was simply passed to the Council, in the words of the Presidency, "for information" (and was adopted without debate at the General Affairs Council on 11 October), and the preparations for the Tampere summit boiled down to a discussion "over lunch".
The Council did discuss the return of people to Kosovo and cooperation with Russia and the Dublin Convention. On the latter Commissioner Vittorino presented a recommendation to allow Norway and Iceland to participate in the Convention.
There was a discussion on the ratification of the 1995 Convention on a simplified procedure ("voluntary" return) and the 1996 Convention ("involuntary" return). So far only six member states have ratified both Conventions. Ratification requires national parliaments to agree the proposals and it is expected that this may take another year for this to be fully completed.
Finally, the Netherlands government raised the issue of the availability of documents prior to decisions by the Council to their national parliament. At the 29 October meeting it was agreed to draw up a report on the practice in all member states.
29 October JHA Council
The half-day JHA Council started with an "open debate" on the "area of freedom, security and justice" and this was followed by discussion on the Tampere conclusions. Mr Vittorino, for the Commission, said that they would be drawing up a "first draft scoreboard" (to monitor the progress of measures and member state implementation) which should be ready for the December Council meeting.
A progress report was given on the draft regulation by the Commission on EURODAC and the outstanding issues include the usual "territorial scope" (the UK/Spain dispute over the status of Gibraltar) and that of granting implementing powers to the Commission. The Danish delegation said that they wished to exercise the option under the Protocol in the Amsterdam Treaty to join EURODAC - the UK and Ireland have already opted-in to it.
The "Parallel Dublin Agreement" was discussed. It extends the Dublin Convention to non-EU states, Norway and Iceland. Until this is agreed then the abolition of border checks in the other Nordic Union states - Denmark, Finland and Sweden - cannot come into operation as planned by the end of 2000. Bearing in mind the Council's dislike of measures which have to be ratified by national parliaments (because it takes too long) the Commission proposed that there should be a Community agreement, which did not require ratification, rather than a "mixed agreement".
There is still no agreement on the two major issues holding up the draft Convention on Mutual Assistance in criminal matters which has been on the table for more than three years. These issues concern the provisions on the interception of telecommunications as regards: i) the Italian governmentÆs resistance to agreeing to open-ended interception warrants (rather than the current individually authorised ones) for communications coming from the satellite telecommunications ground station in Italy; ii) the problem of the UK due to the fact that MI5 (the Security Service) is empowered to conduct investigation of serious crime in addition to the police. The Presidency put forward a "compromise" proposal but no agreement was reached.
Europol to exchange data with third states, including Turkey
The most controversial issue before the Council was a "Draft Council Decision" drawn up by the Management Board of Europol on the exchange of data files between Europol and non-EU states and bodies. The proposal to exchange data with non-EU states has been highly criticised for lack on controls, accountability and civil liberties/human<