Council of Interior & Justice Ministers
01 January 1991
Council of Interior & Justice Ministers
artdoc August=1994
The Council of Interior and Justice Ministers meeting in
Luxembourg on 20 June discussed fifteen agenda items and passed
on the nod a further fifteen reports known as `A' points (those
on which there is unanimous agreement).
The meeting adopted a new resolution under which the admission
of third country nationals for permanent employment would be
`exceptional', and strong penalties institutionalised. The
resolution provided that discrimination in favour of EU and EEA
nationals must be maintained and reinforced, if necessary by
national legislation, by January 1996 and that these principles
were mandatory for all member states. Non-EEA nationals were to
be considered only for temporary employment where vacancies could
not be filled by national or European manpower or by foreigners
already forming part of the workforce. Exceptions may also be
made for trainees, frontier workers, seasonal workers (allowed
in to the EU for six months maximum every year), and inter-
corporate transfers of key personnel. Mr Tobback, the Belgian
Interior Minister said the resolution would be `grist to the mill
for those who want a Fortress Europe', but no Belgian reservation
was recorded.
The Ministers' meeting moved a step closer to a Europe-wide
computerised fingerprint storing and recognition system by
agreeing to employ a consultant to conduct a `study of users'
needs and demands' of a system `to detect fraudulent or multiple
asylum requests'. The six month 128,000 ECU contract was awarded
to `Consortium Bossard, Team Consult and Organotecnica' (others
bidding included Trasys and Andersen Consulting). Part of the
specification is to look at the requirements for converting
existing records. Several countries, including Germany and the
UK, already have such systems in operation on a national level,
whereby all asylum-seekers are compulsorily fingerprinted when
they make their claim.
They decided that the Director of Europol, from 1 July 1994,
would be Mr Jürgen Storbeck (Germany), the acting co-ordinator.
No decision was taken on the two assistant Directors but Mr
Bruggemann (Belgium) and Mr Rauchs (Luxembourg) had their terms
as deputy coordinators extended to the end of 1994 (see
Statewatch vol 4 no 3; apparently the UK candidate for one of the
deputy post, Mr Valls-Russell, is still a possibility). The
budget for Europol in 1995 was set as 3.7 million ECU (this
excludes the cost of national liaison officers seconded to the
Hague HQ). Discussion on the draft Europol Convention centred on
the German request for their 16 Lände to have access as they were
the `competent legal authorities'. The Spanish Minister argued
for terrorism to be included in Europol's remit but this was
resisted by others (anti-terrorist work is still conducted within
the old Trevi framework of the Police Working Group on Terrorism
and several countries including the UK are opposed to it being
brought within what is seen as the `less secure' Europol setup).
Consulting the parliament
A major row broke out between the Ministers, when discussing the
Conventions on Europol, the European Information System and the
Customs Information System, over the need to consult the European
Parliament on developments on justice, policing and immigration.
Article K6 of the Treaty of European Union (the Maastricht
Treaty), covering these issues, is quite explicit:
`The Presidency and the Commission shall regularly inform the
European Parliament of discussions in the areas covered by this
Title. The Presidency shall consult the European Parliament on
the principal aspects of activities in the areas referred to in
this Title and shall ensure that the views of the European
Parliament are duly taken into consideration.'
The Ministers were divided between those who wanted to interpret
this as merely informing the European parliament of their
business, a fe