The Federation of European Bars (FBE) has passed the following resoluti-on on the occasion of its General Congress in Aix-en-Provence on May 22, 2010:

We appreciate that with the appointment of a commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship and a commissioner for Home Affairs the new EU commission for the first time has separated the department of Home Affairs from the department of Justice. Hereby Security on the one side and Freedom and Justice on the other side have their own advocats on the governmental level who are able to articulate the often contorversial aims of Justice and Home Affairs.

However, the separation of the department of Home Affairs from the de-partment of Justice must also be pursued on the administrative level. Only with a separate Directorate General at European level it will be possible to avoid conflicts of interest and maintain a strict separtaion of powers bet-ween Justice and Home Affairs in performing the tasks of Legal Policy.

A separate Directorate General should have an overall role across de-partments in order to ensure

 the conformance of all European proposals for legislation with the fun-damental rights of the EU-Charta

 as well as the consistency and coherence in European legislation

We are of the opinion that only a separate Directorate General for Justice with such an overall role can meet the significance of the rule of law for a democratic system.