European Ministers of Justice launch attack on cybercrime

Ministers put cybercrime high on their agenda at informal meeting

The European ministers of Justice declared after their informal meeting last Friday and Saturday in Marseilles they will be planning new legislation against cybercrime. France, who holds the EU-presidency for the next six months, has made cybercrime one of the prime issues to be tackled in the judicial co-operation between the fifteen.

French Justice minister Elisabeth Guigou said the Internet is in risk of getting a 'lawless zone'. According to Guigou, the EU realised it had been slow to tackle the fast growing of Internet crime. Guigou announced the EU would seek to improve co-operation with the G8 and the United Nations. The EU also wishes to push forward the negotiations on the Council of Europe Treaty on cybercrime.

European Commissioner of Justice and Home Affairs Antonio Vitorino also unveiled new proposals at the meeting to create a common set of laws to tackle cybercrime. Rules would be needed to give police powers to seize computer data from other countries, and all EU countries should make Internet crimes punishable.

Vitorino stated that existing forms of mutual assistance were entirely inadequate for fast-moving and complex investigations on the Internet. For that, he proposed last Wednesday to introduce the so-called 'mechanism of mutual recognition of criminal judgements' in Internet investigations. This mechanism means that a court order or ruling in one country gets EU-wide validity. It will oblige member states to act on each other's pre-trial-orders (like arrest warrants, witness summons and evidence seizure) and final judgements (like sentences). This will simplify and expedite the European judicial co-operation.

Vitorino also announced the European Commission planned proposals on new legislation to fight child pornography on the Internet, and measures to combat drug trafficking, racism and hacking on the Web.