Viviane Reding and EU Justice

Justice and Home Affairs affect citizens and businesses more directly than most EU policies, and there is a whole lot going on.

The Lisbon Treaty entered into force a year ago, and the area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ) now resembles 'normal' policies and internal actions of the European Union more than before.

The previous blog post looked briefly at Cecilia Malmström and EU Home Affairs, so now we take a peek at Viviane Reding and EU Justice.


EU Justice

Viviane Reding is vice-president of the European Commission and responsible for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship. Her Commission website is actively updated.

It took about six months, but then the Commission got separate Directorates-General for Home Affairs and Justice, both from 1 July 2010. However, they still seem to share the same culture. When I checked the Documentation centre and the Newsroom of DG Justice, they looked as lethargic as the corresponding web pages of their erstwhile fellow workers.

I wonder why.


JHA Council

Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) share the same Council configuration. The conclusions from the last meeting of this Council configuration during the Belgian presidency run to 37 pages, which gives us an indication of highly active policy areas:

Press release: 3051st Council meeting (Justice and Home Affairs), 2-3 December 2010 (provisional version; document 16918/10)

As with home affairs, there is a need for critical but constructive reporting and discussion about EU justice, fundamental rights and citizenship issues.


Citizenship report

I have been following EU citizenship issues on my blogs, so we might as well quote the Council conclusions with regard to the report from the Commission COM(2010) 603:

2010 EU citizenship report

The Council took note of the Commission's 2010 EU citizenship report: Dismantling the obstacles to EU citizens' rights (15936/10). The report analysis the areas where citizens are facing obstacles in the exercise of their rights and proposes 25 initiatives for tackling these obstacles.

You can find the initiatives in the blog post 'EU citizenship: 25 proposals' as well.



Ralf Grahn



P.S. 'The Blog with the European perspective' is how the team blog Kosmopolito describes itself; now closely following Wikileaks / Cablegate.