Brussels, April 13, 2008 - Renate Weber, member of the LIBE Committee in the European Parliament, will be in Hague, on Monday, April 14th, 2008, to meet with representatives of Eurojust - the European agency coordinating actions to combat terrorism and serious crossborder crime inside EU. Mrs. Weber will meet with Eurojust College President, Jose Luis Lopes da Mota, as well as with other members from the agency's College. 

The LIBE Committee has named Mrs. Weber (NLP, ALDE) as the rapporteur for the Report on the proposal - initiated by 14 member states - to reinforce the role and capacities of Eurojust, through a new Council Decision ammending the Eurojust Council Decision of 2002/187/JHA.

Renate Weber has presented, at the beggining of this week, in front of her colleagues from the LIBE Committee, a first draft of the Report on the European Council proposal to amend Eurojust's capacities.

"I am concerned with the fact that there is no reference to the role of European Parliament in the Council’s amendments, although in the future, as the Lisbon Treaty specifically refers to in Article 69h, the Parliament will have co-decision powers on this matter and will play an important supervisory role on Eurojust activity", explained Mrs. Weber in front of her LIBE colleagues. 

"I consider  that even at this stage, before the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the role of the European Parliament should increased in controlling activities of Eurojust. There is nothing in the current community law that would prevent EP to play such supervisory role. It is entirely a matter of political will". Several amendments are focusing on obtaining this kind of control immediately after the decision is taken by the Council.

Supporting the neccesity to strengthen the action and coordination capacity of Eurojust, Renate Weber suggests to introduce amendments guaranteeing that "Eurojust will not become a Super European Prosecutor", a real protection of personal data, since further types of date will be collected, in the future, by Eurojust, and a guarantee that the agency's partners will apply the same protection standards.

Other amendments already included in the report produced by Renate Weber for the LIBE Committee reffer to the protection of procedural rights of the investigated person (such as the right to defence, right to be informed and right to judicial redress etc).