Europol set to be fully operational by July

Date: 29/04/1999

By Simon Coss

THE EU's police agency Europol should finally be able to begin working at full capacity on 1 July, according to Union officials.

Although the convention which created the criminal intelligence agency entered into force more than six months ago, legal disputes between the Union's 15 national governments over details of the accord have prevented Europol from exercising its full powers until now.

But Council of Ministers officials say that agreement has now been reached on key issues and the remaining problems will be resolved within weeks, paving the way for the agency to become fully operational by the summer. "I am pretty confident that for once this is a realistic deadline and that Europol will be taking up its activities by 1 July," said one EU official.

One of the problems which held back progress on the issue was an argument over the make-up of the Joint Supervisory Board (JSB) which will oversee the day-to-day running of the agency.

This dispute pitted France against Germany, but the two governments have now patched up their differences and a formal agreement on the JSB is set to be rubberstamped by Union governments within days, probably at the next meeting of EU finance ministers on 10 May.

Two other obstacles must also be overcome before the agency can wield its powers to the full, but neither of these is expected to pose any real problems. First, a protocol to the main Europol convention guaranteeing that agency staff will have diplomatic immunity still needs to be ratified by the Italian parliament. However, Rome has promised that this process will be completed within a matter of weeks.

Second, several EU governments have yet to sign bilateral agreements with the Dutch concerning the status of Europol's headquarters in The Hague. But, here again, no major problems are foreseen and diplomats expect that the necessary formalities will be completed shortly.

Once these issues have been resolved Europol will, via its network of national offices, be able to gather personal information on EU citizens which will be stored in the agency's huge databases and used in investigations.

Civil rights campaigners have expressed concern that this could give police forces across the Union unfair access to details of people's private lives, but Europol experts insist that there are no grounds for concern. They stress that the convention which will govern the agency's work sets out very strict rules on "human rights and data protection".

If all goes according to plan, from 1 July Europol will also have the right to submit information to non-EU law enforcement agencies, play a coordinating role in certain anti-terrorist operations and prepare to help national police crack down on criminals who produce counterfeit euro notes and coins.