Justice and Home Affairs Council, 29.5.00
01 June 2000
The Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA) on 29 May marked the end of the major decision-making during the Portuguese Presidency of the EU. The major decision was the final adoption of the Convention on Mutual Assistance in criminal matters (see below).
The Council issued a set of "Conclusions on Interception of telecommunications". This was partly prompted by i) the impending decision of the European Parliament to hold an inquiry into the Echelon surveillance system; ii) partly by stories in the media about how even though the UK participated in Echelon it did not "spy" on its EU partners, and iii) partly by more widespread concern over the interception of telecommunications by "law enforcement agencies". The "Conclusions" reflected this confusion. They "reaffirmed" the Council's respect for the "protection of human rights and personal freedoms", emphasised that interception was an "important tool in combating crime or for the defence of national security" but said it must not be used for "commercial advantage". It ends by urging Council working parties to use interception to "protect against the abuse of new technologies".
Convention on Mutual Assistance in criminal matters
The JHA Council finally signed the Convention on Mutual Assistance in criminal matters which now has to be ratified by each members stalest national parliament. National parliaments are only able to either endorse the Convention or to reject it as a whole (which has never happened), they are not allowed to amend a dot or comma of the text. In the UK the ratification process will, as usual, be a mere formality with the Convention simply being "laid before the House" (under the "Ponsonby rules").
At the centre of criticisms of the Convention is that the exceptional new powers are said by EU governments to be necessary to combat serious and organised crime - yet the Convention has been drawn up to cover any crime however minor.
The UK Select Committee on the European Union in the House of Lords issued a report on 18 July to follow up their earlier report on early drafts of the Convention in 1998. This report, with pages of correspondence with Home Office Ministers, raises a series of issues still outstanding in the adopted Convention which it says need to be clarified in the Explanatory report accompanying the Convention.
The report says that parliament was told in 1996 that it was expected to be adopted in May of that year, instead it took four more years. A major reason for this was that the original Convention was concerned with judicial cooperation, later substantial, additions turned it into a Convention on police cooperation as well. Even in May this year the report is critical of the procedure:
"we feel compelled to express our dissatisfaction with attempts by the Council, particularly in the latter stages of the negotiation, to secure political agreement on texts which were incomplete and ill-prepared."(p6)
On data protection the Committee's report says; "little effort seems to have been made to draw up data protection provisions", it goes on to say:
"We have some difficulty understanding why the inclusion of data protection provisions similar to those found in other Third Pillar Conventions should meet such a degree of resistance among Member States... the fact that a number [of Member States] have objected to the inclusion of any data protection provisions at all fall far short of an adequate explanation of the basis for their objections...
We can only conclude that the political will to achieve more favourable provisions is weaker than the political imperative to bring to a close four years of complex and difficult negotiations on the Mutual Assistance Convention." (p16)
Eurostar deal
Jack Straw, the UK Home Secretary, used the occasion of the JHA Council to announce a new agreement with France to "stop illegal immigration via Eurostar services". In March Mr Straw and Mr Chevenement, the<