This treaty was signed in the German city of Prüm on May 27, 2005, by seven European states: Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain. In addition, another nine EU member states later declared their intention to join the agreement: Finland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece.
The document, in particular, stipulated that states would provide each other access to specific national databases. For example, files containing DNA and fingerprint data. The process of searching for the required information should take a few minutes. The new scheme was intended to help fight cross-border crime and international terrorism. According to the document's developers, their goal was to create a modern police information network to control crime throughout Europe. Skeptics, however, argued that since its signing, the agreement had in practice only worked in Germany, Austria, and Spain.
At the beginning of this year, the Minister of the Interior of Germany, which currently holds the EU presidency, Wolfgang Schäuble, at a meeting with his European colleagues, proposed extending the Prüm Convention to all 27 EU countries. According to the head of the German Interior Ministry, a single European DNA bank 'will open a wide field of opportunities for solving and preventing crimes.' In Schäuble's opinion, the only condition under which a police officer could gain access to the database should be the initiation of investigative actions against a particular suspect.