Europe’s handicap: lack of cross-border policing

Date: 13/10/05

Even after the fatal terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, the EU is still without an effective cross-border policing body of the sort that applies in the US.

"Criminals cross state borders in the US, and the FBI can pursue them across those borders," according to UK Liberal MEP Bill Newton Dunn. "In Europe, criminals can cross borders, but there's no organisation right now that can do what these criminals can do."

Newton Dunn, an occasional rapporteur for the Parliament's committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs, still stands by his May 2004 pamphlet Europe needs an FBI, where he argued that the current disconnect between domestic and international policing bodies creates an ideal situation for organised crime, especially human trafficking, internet attacks, illegal drug trading and money laundering.

"The EU is handicapped by the 'it's my information, not yours' and 'I don't trust you' syndromes, both inside individual countries and between countries," he said.

He argued that Europol and Interpol were no sub-stitutes for an FBI because while these organisations can share information, they have no power to make arrests.

Richard Weitz, an associate director of the Center for Future Security Strategies at the Hudson Institute in Washington said: "It's more of a quest-ion of how much power governments are willing to surrender.

"Right now, with 25 different countries, there are 25 potential leaks of information. There are just some crimes that benefit better from this lack of cohesion, like terrorism."

Newton Dunn's call for a 'European FBI' comes from a desire to crack down on organised crime and he does not try to offer any solutions to Europe's terrorist problem, calling that "too big a nut to crack". But some experts consider that a European FBI could be effective in the war against terror, a fight many Americans think Europe has been "lagging behind in", according to Weitz.

"From the US perspective, this would be advantageous because our FBI and our Department of Homeland Security now have to work with 25 separate ministers of the interior," Weitz said.

"A central body would make it easier for us to co-operate on matters. Now it seems like international intelligence is just patched together sometimes."

But Greg Austin, a former Australian intelligence official, now with the Foreign Policy Centre in London, thinks a FBI in Europe would take away too much of member states' national sovereignty.

Austin's recent report The Next Attack criticises how the UK has handled its recent terrorist attacks, but he thinks improved national - not international - policing is the answer. In particular, more money should be given to the MI6, the UK's secret intelligence service.

"The FBI has two roles: one is an intelligence role and the other is a prosecution role when people commit federal crimes," Austin said.

"Since no federal crimes exist against the EU, there's no criminal justice jurisdiction for the EU. The EU would be completely inap-propriate with that role...if it's going to protect the EU in handling subversive terrorist threats, that's also inappropriate because that's something that's done on the national level."

Dunn, on the other hand, suggests that it will take some criminal outrage to persuade national govern-ments that a European FBI is needed: a major organised crime job, such as the robbery of five major European banks on the same day.

"It would have to be a public outrage, otherwise I don't see all 25 member states agreeing to do it," he said. "I suspect what would happen, what intelligently needs to happen, is that some member states will press ahead and take steps towards doing this and the others will have to follow along."

Austin disagrees: "We haven't reached a stage of European integration where that's even on the table."

Article reports on the lack of an effective cross-border policing body in the European Union, which could support the fight against terrorism.

Council of the European Union: Policies: Fight Against Terrorism http://consilium.europa.eu/cms3_fo/showPage.asp?id=406&lang=en&mode=g

---