05/05/2017 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Bernd Fabritius (Germany, EPP/CD), rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on “Abusive use of the INTERPOL system: the need for more stringent legal safeguards”, has welcomed INTERPOL’s recently adopted practice of publishing excerpts from decisions of the Commission for the Control of Files (CCF), its review mechanism for potential victims of abusive notices.
“The publication of extracts from the CCF’s decisions is a step in the right direction – towards more transparency in the application of INTERPOL’s rules, as the Assembly recommends in the resolution it unanimously adopted last week. The publication of the decisions, which should become as systematic and complete as possible, will enable the development of ‘case law’ that putative victims and their lawyers can rely on,” said Mr Fabritius.
The rapporteur underlined that “making the applicable rules accessible, and information on their interpretation available, is a key component of legal certainty. This is why the Assembly has also asked for the publication of a ‘repository of practice’ on the interpretation of Article 2 of INTERPOL’s Constitution on respect for human rights. Such a publication is eagerly awaited by civil society, and was requested by INTERPOL’s General Assembly in 2014.”