Bruton calls for State to drop EU crime objections
The call was made by Deputy John Bruton who today presents a report to the Convention on the Future of Europe on justice issues in the EU. The former Fine Gael leader chairs the working group that produced the document.
Mr Bruton appealed to Justice Minister Michael McDowell and the Government to re-examine their attitude to EU co-operation on crime.
"I would like the Minister for Justice and the Irish Government to look at this issue in another light that while Ireland may be an island it is not as far as crime is concerned and Irish people need protection at home but also abroad. The proposals in this paper give us this opportunity," he said in Brussels yesterday.
The report says member states must abandon their veto when it comes to voting on cross-border crime, terrorism-related crime and people trafficking. This would not mean that some of the traditional protections that Irish people have before the Irish courts would be compromised by some European practices such as detention for interrogation, Mr Bruton said.
Instead, Ireland has been given an opportunity to promote protection from crime, and improve methods of tackling organised crime.
"We should not look at it as a one way street which some legal people in Ireland are apprehensive of," he said.
The areas in which the document suggests the EU member states should co-operate must be limited to those where cross-border crime is serious and they must be on a pre-agreed list.
The laws would be approximated and not harmonised, so the details of laws in every country would not have to be changed, Mr Bruton said.
Several countries, including Ireland, are reticent about abandoning the veto in relation to justice issues, but the way to overcome this is to ensure the parliament of each country was fully involved, Mr Bruton said.
Some of the fears of the Irish Government have been reflected in the proposals of the final document, Mr Bruton said.
"There is no government in this Convention that has not changed its position on a lot of issues," he said, adding that he believed Ireland would do so also.
He warned that the Government should not think it could change the thrust of the Convention by waiting and using its veto at the Inter-Governmental Conference, where the future direction of the EU will be decided.
Mr Bruton said France, Germany and Britain had recently appointed senior ministers to the Convention.
"This is a sign that the Convention is where the business is being done.
"They will not spend a large chunk of their lives just producing an academic paper that can be binned by the
Inter-Governmental Conference that will then write its own," Mr Bruton said.
