The first day of the Informal Meeting of Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs

Informal Meeting of Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs took place in Prague today, on 15 January 2009.

Among others, the representatives of the following Member States participated in the meeting at the Prague Congress Centre: Switzerland, Norway, Island, Liechtenstein, Croatia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey. Minister of the Interior of the Czech Republic Ivan Langer proposed several main topics for discussion to his counterparts.

At first, the Ministers addressed the issue of modern technologies and security. Modern technologies are developing rapidly and they are easily accessible to criminals and terrorists. It is not acceptable to allow criminal organisations to gain any advantage over security agencies in this respect. Therefore it is important to coordinate the use of modern technology on the EU level more efficiently. The Member States agreed on the European approach that needs to be characterised by three key values: safety, freedom of movement and privacy protection. This approach will represent the basic political framework of further discussions of this topic. The Czech Presidency is determined to begin by an inventory of the present state of utilisation of modern technologies in the EU. The Ministers also agreed that it is necessary to ensure overview of practical functioning of already approved instruments; what is effective and where, on the other hand, cooperation is no longer sufficient and which direction should we take in the future.

For more information and photogallery see www.eu2009.cz