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Enlarging the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Problems of Diversity and EU Instruments and Strategies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2017
Extract
Ten years ago justice and home affairs (JHA) did not yet even exist as a EC/EU policy-making area. Yet—after modest beginnings in the context of the Maastricht Treaty’s “Third Pillar” in 1993—the development of EU policies in the JHA area was transformed into a fundamental treaty objective by the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam on 1 May 1999, Article 2 TEU providing for the maintenance and the development of the European Union as an “area of freedom, security and justice” (AFSJ). This new integration objective was strengthened by the introduction of a range of new policy objectives, the communitarisation of asylum, immigration and other issues of the former “Third Pillar”, the incorporation of the Schengen acquis, new and more appropriate legal instruments and improved judicial control. This, and the results of the Tampere European Council of October 1999, led to a further expansion of the scope of policy-making in justice and home affairs, with dozens of new legislative acts being adopted, a considerable number of new legislative initiatives and even the establishment of new bodies—such as the prosecution agency Eurojust and the European Police College. There is no other example in the history of EC/EU integration process of an area of previously loose intergovernmental co-operation ever having made its way so quickly to the top of the Union’s political and legislative agenda.
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- Copyright © Centre for European Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge 2000
References
1 Vienna Action Plan OJ 1999 C 19/1, para. 6.
2 Tampere Presidency Conclusions (Council document SN 200/99) para. 2.
3 This rationale is also taken up in the Tampere Conclusions—with a slightly populist undertone—which state that “people have the right to expect the Union to address the threat to their freedom and legal rights posed by serious crime”. (Tampere Presidency Conclusions, para. 6).
4 From 1990 to 1997 and 1992 to 1999 respectively.
5 Giving evidence on 5 July 2000 before Sub-Committee F of the European Union Committee of the House of Lords Dr Gerald Lehnguth, Ministerialdirektor at the German Ministry of Interior, declared that it was the German position that “there can be no dropping of security standards and that the newcomers must keep to the standards laid down by the old members” and that “no exceptions can be made for any particular country”; House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union: Enlargement and EU External Frontier Controls, Session 1999-2000, 17th Report, October 2000, Minutes of evidence, paras. 270-271.
6 Decision of the Schengen Executive Committee of 16 September 1998 (SCH/Com-ex (98) rev 2).
7 The full list is available on the Council’s justice and home affairs web site: http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/justice_home/index_en.htm.
8 The term “diversity” will be used in Part II as a generic denominator for differences between the justice and home and home affairs systems of the eastern applicant countries on the one hand and the EU justice and home affairs acquis on the other.
9 This part of the report is to a large extent based on interviews with officials of national ministries, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission and the use of a number of classified documents from national ministries and the Council of the European Union.
10 Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia.
11 Through a substantial revision of the Law on Refugees in September 2000.
12 On 16 March 2001 the Council adopted a Regulation determining a list of third countries whose nationals must be in possession of visas which provides that in the case of Romania the visa requirement will only be lifted on the basis of a Commission report on specific undertakings by Romania in the fight against illegal immigration OJ 2001 L 81.
13 Such as the Czech Republic which in September 2000 signed the 1981 Council of Europe Convention on the protection of the processing of personal data and established the office for Personal Data Protection as an independent supervisory authority.
14 See on this point House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union: Enlargement and EU External Frontier Controls, Session 1999-2000, 17th Report, October 2000, paras. 10-12, 15 and 44-46.
15 Polish Ministry of the Interior: Polska Strategia Zintegrowanego Zarzadzania Granica, Warsaw, June 2000.
16 European Commission: Regular Report on Slovakia’s Progress Towards Accession, Brussels, 8 November 2000, 17.
17 Joint Action 98/428/JHA, OJ 1998 L 191/8. The core piece of the collective evaluation mechanism is a group of experts (“Collective Evaluation Group”) which has the task—under the supervision of the COREPER and in close cooperation with the Article 36 Committee—of preparing and keeping up-to-date collective evaluations of the situation in the candidate countries on the enactment, application and effective implementation of the Union acquis. The Member States make available to this group all relevant material compiled by national author ities, including information on their direct experience of working with the candidate coun tries, reports from Embassies and intelligence services and reports from the Council of Europe.
18 See Art. 6 of the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement.
19 SEC(6)96, a consultancy report drawn up by the former British Home Office official J. Langdon.
20 OJ 2000 L 253.
21 Council document no. 6757/01.
22 OJ 2000 L 336.
23 Pre-accession pact on organised crime between the Member States of the European Union and the applicant countries [...], OJ 1998 C 220/1.
24 Agence Europe, no. 7925 of 17/03/2001, 7.
25 Arts. 40 TEU, 43 TEU and 11 TEC (Treaty of Nice: Arts. 40-40b and 43-43b TEU, 11 and lia TEC).
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