Next EU Justice and Home Affairs programme must not be another “shopping list”
14 Apr 2014 01:08 PM
The House of Lords Home
Affairs, Health and Education EU Sub-Committee has today criticised the
“shopping list” style of earlier EU Justice and Home Affairs
programmes, in particular the most recent one, the Stockholm Programme
(2010-14), as being too diffuse.
It called for a more strategic
future programme with effective evaluation at its heart. The Committee also
highlighted the need for urgent completion of pending legislation from the old
programme including the Passenger Name Record Directive and the Data Protection
Directive.
The Committee also concludes
that EU agencies such as Europol, Eurojust, the European Asylum Support Office,
the EU Agency for Network and Information Security and the EMCDDA must be
properly resourced, well managed and subject to light-touch Parliamentary
scrutiny.
Sub-Committee
Chairman
Chairman of the
Sub-Committee, Lord Hannay of Chiswick,
said:
“The Committee is
persuaded that the next programme must be based on clear strategic guidelines
on the way forward in the area of freedom, security and justice. Justice and
home affairs affect the day-to-day lives of all European citizens. The
watchword should be “steady as she goes”.
Our increasingly interconnected
societies and the rise in serious and organised crime across national borders
mean that effective partnership in tackling these issues is even more
essential.
Evaluation must be central to
this next programme. Having come through a period of considerable legislative
activity in JHA it is now time to effectively consolidate and to implement
existing legislation effectively. Any further legislation must be underpinned
by appropriate data and a convincing rationale for EU-level
action.
There are still important items
of legislation on the table which remain under consideration. The PNR
Directive, Data Protection package, and reforms of Europol and Eurojust must be
given high priority.
By conducting this inquiry
before the strategic guidelines for 2015-19 have been agreed we have attempted
to influence their direction ‘upstream’. We hope that the
conclusions and recommendations made in this report will be a useful
contribution to the development of the next Programme, for the UK Government,
for the Commission and for the other EU Member States."