The European Public Prosecutor

According to Article 86 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the EU will get a European Public Prosecutor.

In a short information document prepared by DG H 2B in the Council secretariat, the Spanish EU Council Presidency summarises the background of this new EU office introduced by the Lisbon Treaty.

The document ends with two questions. The first question just asks how to put in place the European Public Prosecutor's Office, but the second is much more interesting:

Is it appropriate to consider the possibility provided for in Article 86(4) right from the start of that procedure?

For those of you who don't know the two Lisbon Treaties (TEU & TFEU) by heart already, here's the respective paragraph:

Article 86 para 4 TFEU

The European Council may, at the same time or subsequently, adopt a decision amending paragraph 1 in order to extend the powers of the European Public Prosecutor's Office to include serious crime having a cross-border dimension and amending accordingly paragraph 2 as regards the perpetrators of, and accomplices in, serious crimes affecting more than one Member State. The European Council shall act unanimously after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament and after consulting the Commission.

In other words, the Spanish Council Presidency is asking the member states whether they want to extend the powers of the European Public Prosecutor right from the beginning.

If agreed, this would make him responsible for all "serious cross-border crimes", powers he hasn't been given right away by the Lisbon Treaty. Paragraph 1 of Article 86 so far only gives him power to "combat crimes affecting the financial interests of the Union".

The answers given by the member states will thus pretty much be an indicator how much they are willing to delegate powers in the field of criminal justice to the European Union.

Europol: 5 Billion Euro fraud in EU CO2 emissions trading

Via Raymond Frenken I was made aware of a Europol press release that reports about fraud in the EU CO2 emissions trading, including a graphic that explains how this worked.

But the sum is incredible: 5 billion Euros lost for the European taxpayer!!

"The European Union (EU) Emission Trading System (ETS) has been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months. This resulted in losses of approximately 5 billion euros for several national tax revenues. It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities."

Maybe I have missed something, but why don't the traditional media report about that?

A Single Point of Contact for Comparable Statistics on Crime: Council discussions

I like to see Council documents that give an idea about discussions behind the scenes.

Today I found a document (published now, but issued in November) for the "Multidisciplinary Group on Organised Crime" in which discussions for setting up a "Single Point of Contact for Comparable Statistics on Crime" are summarised, indicating also the positions of member states.

Background is the following assessment:

[O]ne of the obstacles to producing comparable crime statistics at EU level was the absence, in many cases, of a single point of contact in the Member States, capable of meeting the various requests with a view to providing the necessary statistical data, regardless of whether those requests came from the Commission, Eurostat, Europol, Eurojust, or other international organisations. In many cases, that meant delays in dealing with questionnaires and requests, duplication and difficulties in collating data dispersed over different ministries and administrations. In other cases, points of contact did exist, but there were just as many ministries affected by this horizontal problem (Ministry of the Interior, Justice, etc.).

So now the question is whether member states want to set up one supranational contact point that would unite European statistics on crime.

Most of the countries, contrary to the statement above, seem to have respect national contact points, and they are now discussion about the pros and cons of setting up a European structure. 14 countries, at the time, had answered a short questionnaire:

We learn for example that Germany is the only country that is against the proposal, apparently because of its internal federal structure. Belgium and Latvia have some hesitations, inter alia because they see difficulties in actually producing comparable statistics. Nevertheless, most countries having replied see room for better co-ordination and thereby more efficient information flows and economy of resources through such a unified contact point.

Altogether, discussions seem to be very premature, but we get at least an idea on what level and with which arguments member states are discussing. At the end of the document, we also get a list of some national contact points for crime statistics, which might also be useful for some.