EU: Plans for a European evidence warrant, which will allow objects and data to be sent to other member-states for criminal trials, are to be examined by EU officials, following an opening discussion at the informal meeting of EU justice ministers yesterday, writes Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent
This follows agreement on such a warrant last year. It will allow people charged with a crime in one EU country to be arrested in another and brought for trial. The decision has been ratified by eight member-states, and is expected to be ratified by the remainder within the next three months, according to Mr McDowell, the Minister for Justice, who chaired the meeting.
The EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner, Mr Antonio Vitorino, said this latest measure was "the first step" in developing a system for the exchange of evidence in criminal trials between member-states. It was intended to replace the existing lengthy and cumbersome mutual assistance arrangements, which could take months, if not years, to produce the required evidence, he said.
The proposal is part of an agreement on wide co-operation in criminal matters agreed at Tampere five years ago, and was first put forward last November. Justice ministers discussed it for the first time yesterday.
The warrant will cover evidence like objects, documents and data obtained during a criminal investigation. A judge in the state where the trial is taking place can issue the warrant for such evidence after it has been collected in another member-state. Such a warrant cannot be used to initiate an investigation. It will not cover evidence taken from witnesses or suspects, bodily samples, intercepted communications, or analysis of existing evidence.
Asked what would be the "second step" in the process of increased co-operation in criminal prosecutions, Mr Vitorino said that if this worked well, the EU Commission could go on to consider applying it to evidence like intercepted communications, though he did not expect this to happen in the near future.
Mr McDowell said the feeling around the EU justice ministers' table was that the proposed European evidence warrant raised fundamental issues of principle, and these were challenging. But he stressed the importance of obtaining agreement.
"At Tampere there were two ways to go - an integrated European legal system or mutual recognition for legal institutions. We've taken the latter path. This is the logic of that position."
He said yesterday's discussion was the first "outing" for the proposal, and it would now be subjected to line-by-line analysis.
Referring to concerns about the civil liberties implications of the proposals, by organisations like the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, he said a balance had to be struck between the civil liberties of citizens likely to be victims of crime and those of the accused. "You can't have a radically different set of rights just on the basis of geography," he said. "You can't have radically different results in the criminal process on this basis."
All EU proposals had to be within the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights, he said.