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Justice Minister Ana Birchall voiced hope that the EU-US ministerial meeting of Justice and Home Affairs ministers on Wednesday will make progress in starting negotiations on the agreement to get electronic evidence within the framework of judicial cooperation on criminal matters.
She reminded that a negotiating mandate was adopted at the Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting on 6 June.
"It is really an honor for Romania's presidency of the EU Council to continue the US-EU dialogue. On today's agenda we have some very important topics such as cyber co-operation, e-evidence [cross-border access to electronic evidence - ed.n] but also cooperation to find resilience methods for the electoral systems. At the last JHA, on June 6, Romania obtained - on our mandate - an extraordinary thing, namely the mandate for the start of EU-US negotiations on e-evidence. We are aiming today to move forward, so that this very important negotiating mandate kick off not only for the EU but for the US as well. (...) It is really an honor and a joy for the Romanian Presidency of the EU Council, because in the field of justice everything that we have aimed for in our mandate as presidency, we have obtained. I am very proud and grateful to all those who have contributed to this success," she said, before the meeting hosted by the Palace of Parliament.
Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova in her turn stressed the importance of EU-US cooperation as they face similar challenges.
It is a very important meeting we are holding every half year to discuss issues of common interest with the US. It is very important to strengthen the EU-US ties in the field of security and cooperation in the field of criminal justice. We face very similar problems, if not identical, so it is normal to want to strengthen cooperation, Vera Jourova said.
Interior Minister Carmen Dan spoke about meetings with US officials at the ministry's headquarters, among the tackled topics being cooperation on emergency situations and information sharing.
"Today we have an extended meeting between EU and US representatives in the field of law enforcement. It is a dialogue that takes place in the coordination of the Romanian Presidency - one of the last activities that we organize during our term, we will discuss the applied in the field of security. I am happy with the presence of three European Commissioners: Security Commissioner Julian King, Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos, and, of course, representatives of the European law enforcement agencies.We are also enjoying the presence of a consistent American Delegation. We took advantage of the fact that we have them as guests in Bucharest and yesterday we had a meeting at the ministry, where we discussed the national component of the relationship We have a very good exchange of information with the US departments, the FBI. We discussed about the relationship in the emergency situations, a good collaboration between DSU and FIMA, and today we will discuss in a practical manner on computer crime, migration policy, exchange of information. I hope it will be a constructive meeting," the minister said.
