EU member states have failed to reach agreement on the establishment of an EU-wide agency to monitor their compliance with fundamental human rights.


The disagreement in the Council of Europe centred on whether the 'third pillar' issues of police and judicial co-operation should be included in the scope of the proposed EU Fundamental Human Rights Agency.


The UK, Ireland and Denmark have all negotiated opt-outs to the migration of these areas of national law into 'first pillar' EU law - those areas where the European Community has primacy. The right of initiative is shared with national governments in the third pillar.


The UK has long argued that policing and criminal law should remain the prime responsibility of the individual member state, with European institutions playing a secondary role.


The absence of a common standard governing human rights was another cause for disagreement, with certain member states unwilling to open themselves to the monitoring and scrutiny that the new agency could impose.


Other states also saw the proposed agency as the forerunner of an EU constitution 'by the back door' because it aims to merge the three pillars of the EU.


Maik Martin, EU criminal justice legal officer at lawyers' rights organisation Justice, said: 'The proposed agency's remit could be interpreted as an intrusion into a sovereign state's right to monitor its own policing and judiciary. But if you've got nothing to hide, why object to scrutiny?'


He added: 'The failure to reach a consensus was a setback for European human rights. Police and judicial co-operation affects individual lives and, for the agency to have any meaning, must be in its remit.'


Franco Frattini, the European commissioner responsible for justice, freedom and security, insisted last month that the agency was 'a logical consequence of the growing importance of fundamental rights issues'.

He admitted that 'views are diverging' over police and judicial co-operation but said he was confident that there would be agreement.





Jonathan Rayner