Activites

• 2005/12/09 Final act published in Official Journal
• #2690
• 2005/11/21 Council Meeting
• 2005/11/21 End of procedure in Parliament
• 2005/11/21 Act adopted by Council after consultation of Parliament
• #2652
• 2005/04/14 Council Meeting
  • 2652 summary

    The Council held a policy debate on the exchange of information extracted from criminal records with a view to defining general guidelines for future proceedings and in particular for future Commission proposals on the interconnection of national criminal records.In addition, information was provided by France and Germany, which - together with Belgium and Spain - have engaged in a pilot operation involving the interconnection of criminal records which should be operational by the end of 2005.On the basis of the discussions, the Presidency noted that broad agreement had been reached within the Council concerning the following questions:§         the need to base exchanges of information on bilateral communications between criminal records;§         in the case of Community nationals, access to information concerning convictions should be through the Member State of the nationality of the convicted person. The Member State of nationality would also have to concentrate information concerning the criminal records of Community nationals and would be obliged actually to record in full all convictions handed down against its nationals in other Member States of the European Union. The practical arrangements for such an obligation (scope, filtering, period of storage, deletion, etc.) will be considered in detail at a later stage on the basis of a proposal to be submitted by the Commission (refer to CNS/2005/0267);§         in the case of nationals of non-member countries, or where the nationality of the convicted person is not known to the Member State of conviction, a European index would be created identifying the Member State of conviction.It should be recalled that when it adopted the Hague Programme the European Council meeting on 4 and 5 November 2004 made the exchange between Member States of information concerning criminal convictions a priority matter and asked the Commission to prepare new proposals. On 25 January 2005 the Commission submitted the "White paper on exchanges of information on convictions and the effect of such convictions in the European Union".It also organised two meetings of experts on the white paper and the related feasibility study.

• 2005/02/22 Results of vote in Parliament
  • Results of vote in Parliament
  • T6-0029/2005 summary

    The European Parliament adopted the report by Antonio DI PIETRO (ALDE, IT) on the exchange of information extracted from the criminal record. (Please refer to the summary dated 01/02/2005).

• 2005/02/21 Debate in Parliament
  • Debate in Parliament
• 2005/02/03 Committee report tabled for plenary, 1st reading/single reading
  • A6-0020/2005
• 2005/02/01 Vote in committee, 1st reading/single reading
• #2626
• 2004/12/02 Council Meeting
  • 2626 summary

    The Council agreed on a general approach on the text of Articles 1 to 8 of a proposal for a Decision on exchange of information extracted from criminal records. The preamble, the forms to be annexed to the draft Decision and the question of access for natural persons will be discussed at a later stage by the Council.The proposal aims to ensure that the criminal record in the Member State of the person's nationality is as complete as possible at the earliest opportunity. Therefore, each central authority of a Member State must without delay inform the central authorities of the other Member States of criminal convictions and subsequent measures in respect of nationals of those Member States entered in the criminal record. Furthermore, a central authority may request information from the criminal records of another Member State. The reply must be sent immediately and in any event within a period not exceeding ten working days from the receipt of the request, under certain conditions. Requests, replies and other relevant information may be transmitted by any means capable of producing a written record under conditions allowing the receiving Member State to establish authenticity.In all Member States criminal convictions are recorded by a variety of procedures in specific registers. There are exchange mechanisms to facilitate the transmission of this information between Member States, in particular under the European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters of 1959. However, an analysis of their operation reveals that they contain gaps and function randomly and slowly, no longer meeting the needs for judicial cooperation in a frontier-free area such as the European Union. Recent tragic paedophilia cases have also highlighted the serious malfunctioning of systems for the exchange of information on convictions between Member States. Likewise, the demands of the fight against terrorism are such that the quality of these exchanges must be improved quickly.

• 2004/11/16 Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
• #2613
• 2004/10/25 Council Meeting
  • 2613
• 2004/10/13 Legislative proposal published
  • COM(2004)0664 summary

    PURPOSE: The exchange of information extracted from the criminal record.PROPOSED ACT: Council Decision.CONTENT: The European Commission is in the process of preparing a computerized system of information exchanges on criminal convictions between the Member States. Currently, Member States record conviction according to a variety of procedures in specific registers. The 1959 European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters helps facilitate the transmission of important information. However, recent studies of the Convention indicate that there are gaps in the current system of exchange. In addition the Convention is accused of operating randomly and slowly. In short it no longer meets the needs for judicial co-operation in a frontier-free area. Yet, the need to improve information exchange on criminal records is becoming all the more urgent in the wake of paedophile scandals and acts of terrorism.The Commission acknowledges that a fully functioning computerised exchange system requires major technical and legal work and thus its operational phase is some years away. Accordingly, this proposal does not seek to amend the nature of the obligations imposed on the Member states but to make practical improvement to the current system, without prejudging the results of future work. The proposed Decision provides for each Member State to designate a central authority to deal specifically with this issue and contains two major elements.Firstly, it seeks to ensure that the criminal record in the Member State of the person's nationality is as complete as possible, so that exhaustive information is quickly available on a Community national's criminal conviction in the territory of the European Union. Under current provisions Member States are only obliged to submit information once a year. The proposal requires information to be passed on without delay.Secondly, the proposal makes provisions for requests for information extracted from the judicial record. Given that there are no existing deadlines, this proposal suggests that a request for information extracted from the criminal record must be satisfied within a maximum of five days. For ease and speed of use, forms translated in all of the EU's official languages accompany the proposal. Such a measure should ease the current burden of translation costs as well as preventing added delays in the exchange of information.

  • DG [{'url': 'http://ec.europa.eu/justice/', 'title': 'Justice'}],

Documents

• Legislative proposal published: COM(2004)0664
• Debate in Council: 2613
• Debate in Council: 2626
• Committee report tabled for plenary, 1st reading/single reading: A6-0020/2005
• Debate in Parliament: Debate in Parliament
• Results of vote in Parliament: Results of vote in Parliament
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T6-0029/2005
• Debate in Council: 2652

History

(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)