French Foreign Affairs Minister Dominique de Villepin made the announcement earlier this month when presenting the French Council of Ministers with draft legislation authorising the ratification.
France's ratification would be the Convention's fourth – with five needed before it can enter into force.
In particular, the Convention deals with offences related to infringements of copyright, computer-related fraud, child pornography and offences connected with network security. It also covers a series of procedural powers such as searches of and interception of material on computer networks.
Controversially, the Convention includes powers to preserve data, to search and seize, to collect traffic data and to intercept communications. These powers came in for serious criticism from privacy activists during the drafting process.
It also contains an Additional Protocol that makes it a criminal offence to disseminate racist or xenophobic propaganda via computer networks – although this had to be separated from the main text to avoid alienating the US, where it would likely be deemed inconsistent the country's Constitutional right of free speech.
The Convention has so far been signed by 33 of the 42 Member States of the Council of Europe, including the UK, France, Germany and Norway. Four non-member states – Canada, Japan, South Africa and the US – have also signed the treaty.
However, for the Convention to have the force of law it must not only be signed, but also ratified, i.e. given effect to in the laws of a participating country, by five of those states - three of which must be members of the Council of Europe. So far only three Member States, Albania, Croatia and Estonia, have taken this step.
The text of the Convention is available at:
http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/
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