European police sharing of DNA, fingerprints and vehicle data needs safeguards - Ludford

3.57.00pm GMT Wed 6th Jun 2007

The European Parliament will vote tomorrow (June 7th) on the incorporation into EU law of the so-called Prum Treaty. This will allow an unprecedented range of individuals' personal data (DNA profiles, fingerprints) and vehicle details to be exchanged between the law enforcement authorities of Member States. The measure also establishes a legally binding obligation to create national DNA databases in all Member States.

Ahead of the parliamentary vote, Baroness Sarah Ludford, London MEP and European justice spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrats said:

"I support the European and international sharing of information between law enforcement agencies if this could make our communities safer. But that crucially demands parliamentary scrutiny and rules to ensure respect for privacy."

"This instrument, which initially took the form of a private treaty between a few EU countries but is now being slipped into EU law, has lacked proper democratic input, either from national or Euro-MPs. The European Parliament has been given only three months to give our opinion - which can then be completely ignored - on such a complex and sensitive issue."

"Considerable improvements have been recommended by the European Parliament, and EU home affairs ministers need to act on our proposals. One problem is the lack of common rules on whose DNA is recorded. In the UK for example, the National DNA Database contains the information not only of convicted criminals, but also of 1 million citizens who have never been convicted of any crime and 25,000 children who have never even been charged with an offence. The sensitive personal data of innocent people should not be shared around Europe."

Note to Editors:

This instrument is expected to be adopted next week (12-13 June) by the Justice and Home Affairs Council of Ministers.

The European Parliament's response to this decision calls for strengthens data protection rules, limitation of the scope to the prevention and investigation of serious offences, firmer rights of individuals to be informed and to have inaccurate data corrected and unlawfully data deleted, for exchanges of sensitive data such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions etc to be subject to strict safeguards, and for criminal sanctions for abuse.