EU unity cracks over co-operation with UK on security after Brexit
The European Union was last night fighting to avoid an internal split over the post-brexit security partnership, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
It has emerged that Horst Seehofer, the hardline German interior minister, had told French and Dutch counterparts that “nothing must change” after Brexit that would endanger the security of EU citizens.
Mr Seehofer’s position on retaining co-operation with Britain puts him at odds with both Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and the European Commission, which will today hold a high-level Brexit seminar on future security co-operation in Brussels.
“Seehofer believes that the EU has such an interest in keeping high-level security co-operation that we must not allow any deterioration in the operability of schemes such as the European Arrest Warrant [EAW],” said a highly placed European diplomatic source.
Mr Seehofer is said to have accepted British arguments that freezing the UK out of real-time crime-fighting databases such as the Schengen Information System II (SIS II) for “theological” legal reasons will put lives at risk on both sides of the Channel.
The UK Government has said it wants to remain a member of SIS II, the EAW and the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), which allows the exchange of information about criminal convictions but which isn’t open to non-eu members.
In a speech earlier this month, David Davis, the Brexit secretary, warned that if the UK was blocked from ECRIS it “may no longer be able to protect the public” when dangerous individuals move between the UK and the EU.
A second source in Brussels confirmed that Mr Seehofer had taken the position that EU security capabilities must be maintained “even if it amounted to cherry-picking” but said it was also clear that Mrs Merkel’s office was seeking to block the idea.
In an apparent bid to get member states to take a hard line on the issue, Michel Barnier’s Task Force 50 distributed a summary of an internal EU inspection which highlighted “serious concerns” about the UK’S handling of official data in the operation of SIS II.
The move was seen as highly provocative by British negotiators and a deliberate attempt to influence member states “not to trust” the UK on security matters when it was outside the reach of the European legal system.