Campaign to give Europol sharper teeth

Date: 21/12/1995

By Rory Watson

THE European Parliament is planning to embarrass EU member states early next year over their continued failure, against a background of rising crime, to adopt the legislation needed to make the Europol police agency fully operational.

MEPs will also be urged to support a campaign aiming eventually to transform Europol from an intelligence coordination centre into a European Police Office, with its own investigative and operational powers directly under the responsibility of a European Commissioner.

The initiative is being promoted by the Parliament's civil liberties committee, which wants to see Europol's remit extended in a thorough review conducted after two years' operation of the convention.

MEPs will tell governments that the current dispute over whether or not the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has a role in handling Europol complaints should not be used as an excuse to block ratification of the necessary convention.

Despite an eleventh hour effort by Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez at last week's Madrid summit to settle the argument between the UK, which does not want any ECJ involvement, and the other 14 who do, the negotiations remain deadlocked.

The failure took some of the gloss off what had been one of the most successful meetings of EU leaders in recent years and, faced with continued British opposition, Gonzalez warned: “On Europol we did not make the headway we would have wished. We will have to take significant decisions on this in June.”

German Christian Democrat MEP Hartmut Nassauer, who is preparing the European Parliament's Europol report, is extremely critical of the delay over Europol, despite the agreement by the Cannes European summit in June to approve the convention.

“By the beginning of December this year, not one single national parliament had started the ratification procedures for the Europol Convention,” he complained this week, forecasting it could be another three years before the convention comes fully into force.

In a report prepared for the Parliament, Nassauer, a former interior minister of the German Land of Hesse, warns that recorded crime in the Union is increasing, while the clear-up rate is falling.

Many police authorities lack staff and resources, and are frequently worse equipped than the criminals they are trying to catch. In Germany, he notes, private security firms now employ as many people as the police.

The report highlights the cycle whereby organised crime, which has “military-style planning, across national borders, using the most up-to-date logistics”, successfully launders the proceeds into legitimate activities whose profits are then used to fund further criminal activity.

“The citizens of Europe fail to see why crime should flourish unhindered while bureaucratic obstacles or scarcely comprehensible reservations about sovereignty are put in the way of a European Police Office,” Nassauer complains in his report.

Once properly up and running, Europol aims to improve cooperation between national authorities responsible for tackling drug-trafficking, smuggling of nuclear and radioactive substances, trade in human beings, car theft and terrorism.

But the Parliament's civil liberties committee wants to go further. This week (19 December) it voted 19-3 to press for the eventual creation of the new European Police Office. It also repeated its demand to be more closely informed about Europol's activities and to be consulted in the appointment of its director and deputy directors.

Last week, MEPs castigated those member states refusing to give the European Court of Justice a role in judicial surveillance of Europol's operations, accusing them of being “excessively timid” and of appearing “to wish to exempt police services from adequate judicial control”.

The increased attention which MEPs are now giving to Europol coincides with efforts by the UK-based independent organisation, Statewatch, to foster wider debate on the fundamental issues raised by the convention.

“When first proposed, the convention was intended to cover 'organised crime', especially drug trafficking and money laundering. Now it covers a much wider area including those 'suspected' of offences. Whatever its objectives, the rights of the individual require protection,” says Statewatch.