EU Ministers Back Shared Police Database
Pastor Dale Morgan
EU Ministers Back Shared Police Database*
Monday January 15, 2007 8:31 PM
By CONSTANT BRAND
Associated Press Writer
DRESDEN, Germany (AP) - The top law enforcement officials in the
European Union backed efforts Monday to give police across the bloc
access to national databases containing fingerprints, DNA samples and
license plate information.
Despite concerns by some officials over allowing other national police
forces direct access to their databases, German Interior Minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble said there was ``broad consensus'' among all 27 EU
governments to expand an existing seven-nation data-sharing pact to
include all members.
Schaeuble said a similar data-sharing accord could be signed between the
EU and the U.S. as part of expanded efforts to track down terror groups
and serious crime suspects.
``It's quite new for one member state to have access to databases from
their opposite numbers,'' said Schaeuble, who chaired a two-day meeting
of EU justice and interior ministers in Dresden.
``If we are talking about guaranteeing security, combatting terrorism
and so on, we wish to cooperate closely with our American partners.''
The existing seven-nation pact, signed in May 2005, includes Germany,
Belgium, Spain, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Austria. It
allows police in those countries direct access to genetic records,
fingerprints and traffic offenses in the other members' databases.
Several EU members expressed concerns over the cost of adapting their
databases, but Schaeuble said Germany only spent $1.3 million to open
its system to the other six nations in the pact.
Austrian Interior Minister Guenter Platter said the agreement has made
cross-border investigations easier by speeding up the transfer of
information between countries. Platter and Schaeuble said that police
from their two countries have had 3,000 successful DNA matches in
national databases of unsolved crimes since December.
Schaeuble said he hoped to be able to include the data-sharing pact into
EU law by the end of Germany's six-month presidency in June.
Separately, EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini
pressed member nations to provide ships and planes to patrol the bloc's
southern frontier to deter new flows of illegal migrants from Africa in
the coming months.
He called on EU members to live up to commitments made last year to set
up permanent patrols in the Mediterranean Sea and off Africa's Atlantic
coast to deter migrants from trying to make the dangerous sea voyage to
Europe.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants tried to reach European shores last
year, mostly in Spain's Canary Islands and Italy. Many drowned
attempting the journey in rickety boats.
Spain said it took in some 31,000 migrants last year, most of them from
Africa - almost as many as in the previous four years combined.