cloud storage

The European Union has given the green light to negotiations with the U.S. for an agreement to speed up the exchange of electronic evidence in criminal cases.

If the negotiations are successful, European authorities would be able to access evidence needed for criminal cases more quickly than they can now. And service providers would not have to worry about violating EU data protection rules when providing evidence regarding EU citizens.

With such an agreement, U.S.-based service providers would be obliged to cooperate with EU authorities and provide them with emails and documents stored in the Cloud, for example. Currently, U.S. providers respond to requests for information on a voluntary basis.

Following lengthy internal discussions, the 28 national governments of the EU, meeting in the Council of Ministers, agreed Thursday to give the European Commission a mandate to negotiate an agreement with the U.S. on facilitating access to e-evidence.

“Criminals don't stop at Europe's borders. Nowadays, they use fast and modern technologies to organise their illegal activities and erase their path afterwards,” Ana Birchall, the Romanian minister of justice who chaired the meeting, said in a statement. “A lot of the data needed to track down these criminals is stored in the U.S. or by U.S. companies. An EU-U.S. agreement to speed up the access of our law enforcement authorities to e-evidence is therefore of utmost importance.”

If an agreement is reached with the U.S., it would create a cooperation framework including direct cooperation with services providers. It would shorten the time required for authorities to obtain requested information to 10 days, whereas the average time taken at the moment is 10 months.

The Commission said in a statement that electronic evidence was needed in around 85% of criminal investigations, and in two-thirds of these investigations there was a need to obtain evidence from online service providers based in another country. Currently, the largest service providers have their headquarters in the U.S.

The agreement would mean that the U..S would treat all requests from members of the EU equally. Until now, the U.S. has preferred to strike deals with individual EU countries.

The U.K., Ireland and Denmark would not be covered by this agreement as they have opt-outs from EU criminal cooperation rules. They would seek their own deals with the U.S., which would be identical in scope and content to any EU-U.S. deal.

On the U.S. side, service providers are keen for the government to reach a deal with the EU because any requests made in the U.S. for evidence regarding EU citizens have to comply with EU data protection rules. This often presents a burden and legal risk for U.S. companies.

Negotiations with the U.S. are due to start later this month but are expected to take a considerable amount of time to conclude.

In addition, the Council gave the Commission a mandate to start negotiations for signing up to a new protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. This protocol includes provisions for a simplified mutual legal assistance regime and allows direct cooperation with service providers in other countries that are parties to the Convention. Negotiations on the Protocol have already started.