Judicial forum to ease 'mistrust' between EU member states

BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Tuesday (5 January) announced its intention to set up a forum of national experts to help clear up the problems with implementing EU justice law.

To be launched formally in mid-April, the forum will bring senior judges, lawyers, NGOs and victim support organisations under one roof to work out how to deal with EU justice and criminal law already in place and anticipate problem areas for the future.

EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini says the forum will create "a platform for those practitioners that are involved, day-to-day, with the implementation of EU laws in our field [and] allow a mutually productive exchange of ideas."

The main idea behind the new body is to boost "mutual recognition" of the different legal systems across the bloc, something essential if EU judicial and criminal law is to be effective.

A justice spokesperson said it will "clarify the true needs of practitioners and the problems they face possibly in using and in implementing EU justice instruments."

The problem at the moment is that every member state has its own legal system. On top of this, rules vary across the bloc with regard to a number of issues, such as how investigations are started, how evidence is gathered, access to justice for citizens, the treatment of victims and the right to translation and interpretation services.

Progress in harmonising the areas is slow. Extradition rules were shaken up in 2001 with the European Arrest Warrant introduced following the 11 September terrorist attacks, but these took years to be adopted by member states. Meanwhile, it took until last year for national governments to agree to new rules for sharing evidence.

But even once they are agreed, EU laws have not always operated smoothly. Germany and Italy have in the past clashed over attempts by Italian prosecutors, using the arrest warrant, to try and sentence former Nazi agents for crimes committed in Italy during the second world war.

Mistrust and lack of knowledge

Dr Wolfgang Heusel, a German former judge who now works for the Trier-based European Law Academy, says the basic principle of mutual recognition "requires mutual trust, and mutual trust is based on whether you know each other."

"The huge diversity of the judicial systems with the EU which just means that people just do not understand how the common law system [in Britain and Ireland] works, do not know who is competent, and which courts exist and how the whole process goes and vice versa of course."

He adds: "An element that is never really officially admitted, but that we can see in practice is that in the northern countries, there is certainly a higher level of lack of trust regarding the judicial practices in the southern and eastern countries."

This mistrust could come into play when it comes to the arrest warrant, when judges are often in a position of extraditing fellow nationals to member states where they fear human rights guarantees are less stringent.

Another problem, says Dr Heusel, is that because the EU policies in this area have multiplied rapidly from almost nothing prior to 2000 due to the increase in cross-border crime and terrorist threats, many judges and prosecutors are "not really aware of EU law and their competences in general."

For its part, the forum is to meet several times a year - with sub-groups to focus on certain specific issues such as access to legal aid - with the overall intention of creating a "common judicial culture."