EU to boost criminal records' exchange

Shocked by confessions from a suspected cross-border serial killer, EU ministers yesterday agreed to exchange more information on national criminal records but ruled out a single register for the 25-nation bloc.

The case of Michel Fourniret, a French forest warden who police say has confessed to nine murders on both sides of the Franco-Belgian border, has highlighted the lack of a common European register of convicted murderers or sex offenders.

Fourniret landed a job at a school in Belgium despite a rape conviction in France because no one there knew of his criminal record. France, Germany and Spain said they would speed up their plans to share data on convicted criminals by linking their national registers electronically.

The network could serve as a model for an eventual system encompassing all criminal registers in Europe, they said in a statement.

The Fourniret case prompted Belgium to request yesterday's debate at a regular meeting of European Union justice and interior ministers.

Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner told a news conference ministers did not plan a brand new register.

"Rather it would be a system to have a link-up between the judicial records which do already exist in countries."

The European Commission is drafting proposals to boost information sharing and has said it wants EU states to support plans for networking national registers of serious offenders such as murderers and child abusers.

The first proposals are expected to be ready by October. However, several states said data protection laws and logistics could stall any single database of offenders.

Officials said the complexity of different legal systems and national criminal records also blocked the way for a pan-European register as states store criminal records for different periods.