Bid to boost Europol’s role to combat organised crime

Date: 17/04/1997

By Simon Coss

A RADICAL action plan to tackle the rising tide of organised crime within the Union is set to call for the powers of fledgling European police agency Europol to be increased - even though the organisation has yet to become fully operational.

The plan, which has still to be finalised, has been drawn up within the Council of Ministers by a high-level group of experts from all 15 member states. It will be discussed by justice and home affairs ministers when they meet in Luxembourg on 28 April before being presented to EU leaders at their June summit in Amsterdam.

At present, only one member state - the UK - has ratified the convention which will allow Europol to fulfil its role as a “Union-wide system for exchanging information within a European police office”.

But diplomats argue that Europol's current remit to act as what amounts to a vast pan-European database is simply not adequate to tackle the increasingly sophisticated methods of the international crime gangs effectively.

The draft report says the organisation must be more proactive and urges EU governments to take rapid steps to make this possible. Diplomats say it will call for Europol to be allowed to support and - crucially - coordinate criminal investigations by national law enforcement agencies, and suggest the organisation should also be able, on specific occasions, to ask member states to carry out inquiries.

In addition, it should be allowed to take part in gathering and exchanging information on suspicious financial transactions.

But such proposals are unlikely to be universally welcomed, with opposition expected in particular from the UK, which has already fought off attempts to allow the European Court of Justice to arbitrate in disputes between London and other Union capitals over the interpretation of the existing Europol convention.

“We feel Europol's role is already sufficiently defined. The most pressing need at the moment is to get it up and running in its present form,” insisted one British official.

Any change of government in the UK after the 1 May British election is not expected to bring a change of direction.

France, too, is understood to be less than keen on having its freedom to act in criminal investigations impeded in any way.

The report is also likely to call on all member states to make belonging to a criminal organisation a specific offence, as is already the case in Italy.

Again, this is likely to cause problems, with some officials arguing that criminal outfits would simply need to keep changing their names in order to avoid prosecution. Legal experts point out that under the sort of blanket proposals set out in the report, a person who made the coffee in a firm owned by a criminal organisation would be liable to prosecution.

Diplomats indicate that the report will also call for the EU to conclude, by the middle of next year, a 'pre-accession pact' on cooperation in the fight against crime with the countries of central and eastern Europe (CEECs) currently lining up to join the Union. Many of the crime gangs operating within the EU have strong connections with these countries and such an agreement would oblige the CEECs to show a real commitment to tackling the problem in order to qualify for Union membership.

Diplomats suggest that the CEECs could be helped to do this through the existing EU-sponsored Phare technical assistance programme.

The wider international aspect will also be addressed, according to sources, with particular emphasis being placed on the urgency of developing police cooperation with Russia and Ukraine (home to the 8,000 or so crime gangs inaccurately dubbed the 'Russian Mafia'), possibly through the Union's Tacis programme.

The plan is also likely to suggest enhanced cooperation with the USA, central and South America and the Caribbean states, given that the vast majority of cocaine destined for sale in the Union is produced and processed on the other side of the Atlantic.