Do G6 meetings help or hinder EU policy?

Last March, the interior ministers of the EU's six largest nations met for two days at the German Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm.

When they were not taking in the calming view and relaxing over a schnapps or two, the ministers discussed the issues of illegal immigration, fighting terrorism and organised crime and concluded that it was important to improve "cross-border information exchange between law enforcement authorities" with particular emphasis on DNA, fingerprints and vehicle registration data.

It was not the first time that ministers from the so-called Group of Six (G6) had met: their first meeting was in 2003 and since then they have met every three to six months. They are expected to reconvene in the UK at the end of October.

But as the EU struggles to carve out its own competences in the area of justice and home affairs, some are beginning to question the way these meetings are conducted and what their purpose is.

A recent report by an EU committee of Britain's House of Lords raises some serious issues. The committee found little transparency in the G6 meetings and called for agendas and conclusions to be published in the future. While they did not find anything "objectionable in ministers from different member states meeting informally for exchanges of views...the danger comes when such meetings assume such a degree of formality, and the decisions reached such a degree of immobility, that they appear to take over from meetings of the Community institutions".

Another example of such co-operation is the Treaty of Prüm which was signed in May 2005 by five states (Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany) and set up an information-exchange system of policing. Other member states can join and France and Spain have since signed up, Italy has said that it will join and the UK and Poland are considering signing.

Some observers are unconvinced that such co-operation is a good thing for the EU. Thierry Balzacq, political science professor at Namur University and research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, says it undermines the EU's plan for justice co-operation, known as the Hague Programme. "It short-cuts the Hague Programme because its main instrument is the principle of availability [of information]."

The mechanism of 'enhanced co-operation', first outlined in the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, allows a group of member states to adopt certain measures not agreeable to the rest of the EU, but was not used by the states which signed the Treaty of Prüm. Balzacq says this is because it was seen as too difficult a route to go down - it requires a weighted majority of all member states and must be judged by the Council to further the objectives of the EU.

Balzacq also believes that there may be ulterior motives at work. The European Commission has proposed a wide-ranging plan for exchange of information between all 25 EU states, whereas the Prüm Treaty involves states which know each others' systems well and have a high level of mutual trust. This becomes particularly relevant when the ten new member states come into the equation. "Direct access is the rule and when it comes down to making information available it often becomes a question of trust," he says.

British Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford is also suspicious of the G6 meetings and the Prüm Treaty, particularly because the focus has been on sharing data among states without putting in place the necessary data-protection mechanisms. She says: "These are secret intergovernmental meetings. If the EU framework is dysfunctional then we should reform it." She says states should adopt a Commission proposal to move certain justice matters from intergovernmental law to community law - thereby lifting the national veto and allowing parliamentary scrutiny.

But Hugo Brady, research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in London, says that in the absence of serious co-operation between EU states on justice issues those interested in moving forward should be allowed to do so. "It creates a dynamic in what is not a dynamic area," he says, pointing to a proposal to collect and transfer evidence for criminal trials between EU states which took three years to win the approval of the Council of EU justice ministers.

Brady adds that G6 meetings and similar gatherings are good forums for justice ministries, which are generally highly conservative and protective of their powers. "These meetings take place on a loose basis where ministers are more comfortable to come to the table. They are often suspicious of the Commission's motives on justice and home affairs."

Member states that are not signatories to the Prüm Treaty have not objected to it and will probably ultimately join because it is a measure that can enable better crime-fighting, Brady says. It may even be incorporated into the next EU treaty, he adds. "It would have been better to have had everyone in from the start but European integration has never been a perfect science."

Last March, the interior ministers of the EU's six largest nations met for two days at the German Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm.