EU member states seek more powers for Eurojust

National members of Eurojust, an EU body helping with investigation and prosecution of cross-border crimes, should be able to issue search and seizure warrants when investigating serious crime, according to a new proposal.

They should also be able to tell national police to allow criminals to cross borders for surveillance and investigation purposes.

The proposal, put forward by France and 13 other member states, including Slovenia, which currently holds the presidency of the Council of Ministers, would give national members access to domestic criminal records, DNA databases and any other databases "containing information that is necessary" for them to be able to fulfil their tasks.

Under the plan, an "emergency cell for co-ordination" would be set up to ensure that Eurojust can operate on a permanent full-time basis and take action in urgent cases when the relevant authorities in member states cannot be contacted.

The proposal, seen as a way of levelling out the different competences held by the national members who sit on Eurojust, could be interpreted as granting greater operational powers to Eurojust. "The drafting of the proposal was not good and there is some confusion about elements of it," said one EU official.

The European Commission was to propose similar changes to Eurojust following a report on the organisation published last year. But France is keen to see the changes introduced quickly and therefore proposed its own plan, with support from others.

"All these new solutions are to help support and facilitate the work of those in the member states in charge of the investigations and prosecutions," the new president of Eurojust, José Luís Lopes da Mota, said ahead of the publication of the proposal on 7 January.

Eurojust, whose members are national judges or prosecutors tasked with helping to investigate and prosecute serious cross-border crime, has been operating for more than five years.

The Lisbon treaty, which could come into force next January, allows for the setting up of a European public prosecutor to investigate and prosecute "offences against the Union’s financial interests". Lopes da Mota said that the body should have powers to investigate counterfeiting of the euro as well as fraud of the EU’s budget. "I think that Europe has all the legitimacy to have a body with competence just to protect these interests," he told European Voice.

But he said the creation of a European Public Prosecutor could be a long way off. "If we need unanimity of the Council I think it will be very difficult because there are different approaches and different views in the member states," he said. But Lopes da Mota added the body was more likely to be set up by a small number of member states using the mechanism of enhanced co-operation, as allowed for by the treaty.

National members of Eurojust, an EU body helping with investigation and prosecution of cross-border crimes, should be able to issue search and seizure warrants when investigating serious crime, according to a new proposal.