IRELAND: The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, yesterday predicted that the European Arrest Warrant would be in place across all European Union countries by the end of April, although so far only eight have passed the necessary domestic legislation.
National governments had been set a deadline of January 1st to implement the new law but almost a half of the EU's 15 states have failed to comply so far. The 10 countries joining the EU are supposed to comply by May 1st.
The European Arrest Warrant is intended to replace extradition procedures between EU states where someone is accused of an offence which carries a possible jail sentence of more than a year.
In the course of a wide-ranging discussion with members of the European Parliament, Mr McDowell identified various other items of legislation where the EU was falling behind its previously-agreed timetable.
He said that his main task during Ireland's presidency of the EU was to meet deadlines set by the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 and the European Council at Tampere in 1999 for adopting legislation on asylum and immigration.
He identified the law proposed on asylum procedures, which aims to set minimum common standards for granting and withdrawing refugee status, as being particularly problematic, along with the proposal on asylum qualifications.
"These measures are key elements of the Union's common asylum policy," he said, but suggested that finding an agreement would not be easy for the Irish presidency.
He was abandoning an approach of discussing the qualifications directive line by line, in favour of seeking to identify in broader terms the possibilities for agreement. Among the issues is whether to have a list of "safe" countries, to be used in assessing a claim for asylum, and a list of safe third countries, to which a claimant might be returned if their asylum claim was rejected.
Mr McDowell urged the parliament's committee on citizens' freedoms and rights, justice and home affairs to give its support to a directive on the right of EU citizens and their families to move freely and live anywhere in the Union.
In their responses, MEPs urged the Irish presidency to take up with the US the cause of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. They questioned Mr McDowell about the possible fate of justice and home affairs subjects in the Inter-Governmental Conference on a new EU treaty. They expressed concern about the use by the US of data on airline passengers.