27/06/2019 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The Committee on Legal Affairs stressed the fundamental importance of international cooperation in the field of criminal law. When criminals take advantage of reduced border controls in Europe to escape justice in their own countries and transfer criminal assets abroad, States must react by cooperating with each other efficiently to uphold the rule of law.
According to the Committee, a reasonable balance must be struck between the legitimate interest in preventing impunity for serious crimes, which themselves violate human rights, and the rights of the person targeted by an extradition request, who must not be exposed to a serious risk of flagrant denial of justice, cruel and inhuman punishment and/or discriminatory treatment on political, racial, ethnic or religious grounds.
Adopting a draft resolution, based on the report prepared by Aleksander Pociej (Poland, EPP/CD), the Committee called upon the member States of the Council of Europe to participate actively in the Council of Europe’s cooperation activities in the criminal law field.
Regarding the reform process at Interpol, the parliamentarians calls upon this organisation to further improve transparency by disclosing data that would help to assess how effective its review mechanisms are, and further improve preventive and subsequent scrutiny of Red Notices and diffusions, All member States of the Council of Europe should set an example of good cooperation by making available to Interpol the human and financial resources necessary to improve the quality and timeliness of both preventive compliance checks.