Agendas in general
Agendas of the EU at the Ministry of the Interior in general
- Area of External Relations (JHA RELEX)
- Fight against terrorism
- Police and customs cooperation
- Civil protection
- Information Society
Area of External Relations (JHA RELEX)
Area of External Relations (JHA RELEX)
The current global security challenges require the EU to cooperate in justice and home affairs with third countries and international organizations in order to strengthen its internal security. For this reason the EU developed external dimension of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA RELEX).
Coordination of this agenda is rather challenging due to its cross-disciplinary nature. The competences in this field are shared among the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Priorities in the cooperation with third countries are set forth both in the EU Strategy for the external dimension of JHA and the Stockholm programme. From a geographical point of view, the CZ supports mainly further strengthening of practical cooperation with candidate countries, Western Balkan countries, Eastern Partnership countries and with strategic partners of the EU i.e. USA and Russian Federation.
Link:
Fight against terrorism
Fight against terrorism
Terrorism remains one of the crucial security challenges of the contemporary world. It takes many forms and uses ever more sophisticated and deadly organizational techniques and operational methods.
The European Union has adopted several documents to face better this persisting international security challenge. The corner stone in the field of fight against terrorism is The European Union Counter-terrorism Strategy and its integral part The European Union Counter-terrorism Action Plan, which was adopted after the terrorist attacks in London in 2005.
The EU also gives a lot of attention to the issue of combating radicalization and recruitment of immigrants into terrorist structures, for this purpose the EU created a document called The European Union Strategy for Combating Radicalization and Recruitment to Terrorism.
In the EU framework there has been established also a position of a Counterterrorism Coordinator, who ensures the coherency of the EU and its members‘ activities in this area.
Documents:
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The European Union Counter-Terrorism Strategy (pdf, 194 kB)
Police and customs cooperation
Police and customs cooperation
Police cooperation was institutionalized for the first time by the Treaty on European Union by establishing the police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters (so called third pillar). Important aspects of police cooperation are mainly tasks of the national police forces related to the schengen cooperation and Common Centres for Police and Customs Cooperation or national units of European police office (Europol).
Customs cooperation is closely linked to the police cooperation. Its goal is in particular more effective cooperation between customs administration and police, especially by creating common centers that would take part in crime prevention and crime combating, above all the cross-boarder one.
Links:
Links:
Civil protection
Civil protection
Civil protection remains primarily in national competence of the member states and the EU fulfils mainly the coordination and monitoring role. The main task of the European Commission is to monitor present situation and to be able to render assistance to affected areas (inside/outside the EU).
Links:
Information Society
Information Society
The original Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs for the period 2005 – 2010 continues in a new European strategy „Europe 2020 – Strategy for intelligent and sustainable growth supporting inclusion“ with a goal to overcome a crisis and get the economy of EU ready for next decade’s challenges. The Europe 2020 strategy determines a vision for achievement of a high level of employment, economy with low carbon production, productivity and social solidarity; this vision has to be pursued by concrete actions at EU and national level.
The Digital Agenda for Europe is one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 which has been worked out with an objective to define a key role that using of ICT will have to play if Europe wants to succeed in its ambitions set by 2020. The strategy addresses to seven main obstacles which impede full development of information society or threaten fully use of ICT in Europe. These obstacles are fragmented digital markets, lack of interoperability; rising cybercrime and risk of low trust in networks; lack of investments in networks; insufficient research and innovation efforts; lack of digital literacy and skills; missed opportunities in addressing social challenges.
The Ministry of the Interior is responsible for the strategy implementation at national level but the strategy itself is significantly cross-sectoral and covers also other areas with co-responsibility of other ministries (e. g. the Ministry of Industry and Trade in the field of high-speed internet, the Ministry of Culture in the field of copyrights, the Ministry of Health in the field of e-Health, the Government Office in the field of e-Skills etc.). The Ministry of the Interior is particularly responsible only for some of the main actions, especially e-Government services, including support for interoperability, fight against cyber crime and the review of the e-Signature directive).
Objectives set in The Europe 2020 Strategy are realized by the EC communications, action plans for individual issues and the Council’s conclusions. The European eGovernment Action Plan aims to increase the share of citizens and firms using electronic public administration (eGovernment) or a possibility of processing of formalities with study, establishment of a business or moving online from any EU place regardless of original place of residence. For reducing the red tape the European Commission relies on the idea used during the development of basic registers in the Czech Republic that information are required from citizens only once and then it will be shared by different public administration authorities. There are other priorities of the Action Plan, e. g. support for users’ involvement in the design of eGovernment services, improvement of public administration transparency and involvement of citizens into decision making on public matters. eGovernment ministerial conference , held once in two years by the country that actually holds the EU Presidency is already established tradition. In pursuit of the goals of The European Strategy there is also an emerging tradition of a ministerial conference in an e-Inclusion fieldwhich supports integration of disadvantaged citizens into the society through modern ICT. The Council plays a significant role in the approval of community programmes in ICT field as well.
The new multi-annual Community programme on protecting children using the internet and other communication technologies, so called Safer Internet, came into force at the beginning of 2009. During the period 2009 – 2013 it aims internet to become safer place for children who enter the internet and mobile technologies’ world already in early age and become quickly young people who perfectly manage technologies and surf on the internet. In relation to new technological development and stronger ties between on-line and real world the Safer Internet programme will newly focus on phenomena, such as grooming (a situation when an adult seeks to friend with a child with the intention to abuse him/her sexually) or cyber bullying.
Europe’s Information Society Portal