The adoption follows approval of a final draft in September by the Council’s Deputy Ministers. However, the Convention can only become legally effective when at least five countries, three of which must be Council of Europe members, ratify it. This ratification process, which will involve some changes to domestic laws, is expected to take at least two years. Some non-European countries, including the US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, are also party to the Convention.
The Convention aims to harmonise laws on crimes such as hacking and on-line piracy, fraud and child pornography. The Convention faced much criticism from privacy groups during its long drafting process. Council of Europe representatives dismissed these criticisms, dubbing the Convention as “the first ever international treaty to address criminal law and procedural aspects of various types of criminal behaviour directed against computer systems, networks or data and other types of similar misuse.”