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EU: Council capitulates and releases draft EU-US agreements (1)

01 May 2003

Demands by civil society and parliaments has forced the Council of the European Union to de-classify and release to the public the controversial draft agreements between the EU and the USA on extradition and mutual legal assistance - this should allow the European and national parliaments and civil liberties groups to have an open debate. The contents of the agreements have hardly changed since the February drafts and are analysed below - they contain a number of highly controversial proposals including ones which will undermine EU data protection standards and lead to unaccountable EU-FBI joint investigation teams operating in Europe. Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments: "The EU governments have been forced by civil society, national and European parliaments to formally release the text of the EU-USA agreements - now these sweeping new arrangements and powers can be subject to public and parliamentary debate. The agreements are said to be about combating terrorism but in fact are primarily concerned with crime in general, joint investigation teams - for which no limits are set down - and the surveillance of "suspects". The lack of scrutiny, accountability and data protection in the draft agreements mean they have no place in a democratic society. It is time for people and parliaments to rein in the so-called "war on terrorism". As the EU report on fundamental rights said in its conclusions responses to terrorism must be kept to a strict minimum, must be temporary and be targeted in a way that that does not affect other categories of people. These draft agreements do not meet these standards." The fight to get the draft agreements released for public debate In April 2002 Statewatch was refused access to the draft EU-US agreements on extradition and legal cooperation when the Council of the European Union decided that: “the interest of protecting the Council’s objectives outweighs the interest in democratic control” In August 2002 Statewatch published on the internet a leaked version of the first draft of the proposed EU-USA agreements and on 9 April 2003 Statewatch published the February 2003 drafts. In February and March the French parliament drew up a report but did not release the contents of the draft agreement. The UK parliaments scrutiny committees were sent copies but only on the condition that they did not publish them or a report on the issues raised - they rejected these Home Office conditions as an arbitrary limit on their powers and the denial of a proper, open, public debate (see: Report and documentation) Moreover, at the EU level COREPER (the permanent committee of representatives of the 15 governments) agreed a report (dated 15 April) on the procedure to be followed for the signing and adoption of the agreements: 8296/1/03 (Word) 8296/1/03 (pdf). The report shows that the conflict between confidentiality and the need for scrutiny by national parliaments (and therefore for a public debate) was raised by "several delegations". The Council, through COREPER, therefore agreed there should be two stages: the first to authorise the signing of the agreement as it stands at the meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 8 May in Brussels, the second to publish the Decision to sign with the text attached after the 8 May meeting and after the USA had agreed the final text - this partly involved agreement of the US government and partly the fact that such agreements have to be scrutinised by the US Se