Justice and home affairs

The Finns’ most glaring failure was not getting more support from member states for invoking the ‘passerelle’ clause to lift national vetoes and speed up decision-making in the Council of Ministers.

The European Commission came up with the idea before the Finnish presidency kicked off and even then member states were flagging up their doubts. But Finland persisted with the idea, despite the declared opposition of Germany and the UK.

The Finns did though successfully negotiate early expansion of the Schengen area to include nine of 2004’s ten new member states, though it has to be said that the technical mechanism to carry it out was proposed by the Portuguese. There was also a deal with the US on the transfer of airline passenger data, averting legal chaos. Some MEPs and civil liberties groups have criticised the agreement for giving the US too much ground on the use of EU citizens’ data. Protracted discussions with member states will ensure that the new Fundamental Rights Agency will begin its work in January, though some, such as France and Spain, are unhappy that its oversight will be limited to racism and discrimination. In criminal law, there were agreements to let convictions against an individual in one member state be taken into account in trials in another member state.

But Finland failed to get agreement on establishing a set of minimum rights for suspects, setting up safeguards for the protection of data held in law enforcement databases. A deal on the transfer of prisoners to their home country to serve out their sentences was blocked by Poland.

The Finns’ most glaring failure was not getting more support from member states for invoking the ‘passerelle’ clause to lift national vetoes and speed up decision-making in the Council of Ministers.