Lack of police co-operation across the EU

By David Cronin

Date: 10/02/05

Europol has complained of a lack of systematic co-operation between the police forces of EU countries.

The criticism was raised by a representative of the European Police Office in a meeting of the Council of Ministers' group dealing with police and judicial liaison.

The official told the 'Article 36 committee' that Europol believes "there is no structured interaction between law enforcement authorities" and that "no legal framework exists" to link the various information systems in the EU which store intelligence on crime.

To remedy the situation, Europol has urged the European Commission to draw up a blueprint for improved police and judicial co-operation. A proposal from the EU executive for such an 'intelligence model' is expected this summer.

Europol's complaint follows a dilemma raised by some EU governments following the 11 March bombing in Madrid last year. Nicolas Sarkozy, then France's interior minister, called for "more and better-quality information" to be transferred from national authorities to Europol. But he also underlined that Paris would not give any intelligence it deemed too sensitive to the office.

An internal document from the Article 36 committee also indicates that there are doubts among EU officials about the scope of responsibilities of a justice and home affairs body envisaged in the EU constitution, which is yet to be ratified. The constitution refers to a committee being set up within the Council to ensure "operational co-operation on internal security". Known by the acronym COSI, the committee is to facilitate co-ordination between the relevant national authorities of EU countries.

The Commission believes that COSI should not have legislative tasks but is "not yet sure to what extent" it will cover judicial co-operation, the document shows.

Jan Velleman, spokesman for EuroCop, the umbrella group for police unions, said he suspected that the Commission's observations said "a good deal about bureaucratic politics" between the EU institutions.

"We would like to see an improvement in streamlining the vast number of bodies within the Council - where there are over 20 working groups dealing with operational co-operation," he said.

"We will have to see if the committee envisaged by the constitution is a useful thing or not."

He agreed that there was a need for a "legal framework" to cover the exchange of information across the EU's internal borders. Bilateral deals on exchange of information between EU states and multilateral accords - such as those between the Benelux states - "are all kept separate from each other", he added. "The result we see is that police officers don't know where they need to go if they need information."

A survey by the Council's working group on organised crime found that most police forces in the EU can hand over personal data on convicted or suspected criminals to agencies in other member states without first obtaining a judicial order.

After receiving responses from 22 European countries - including non-EU members Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, the group concluded that only in Switzerland was judicial approval needed to hand over fingerprints to a police force in an EU state. Only Belgium, Portugal and Switzerland need authorisation to exchange DNA and only Luxembourg and Poland require it to transfer data from driving licences or passports.

Europol has complained of a lack of systematic co-operation between the police forces of EU countries. The criticism was raised by a representative of the European Police Office in a meeting of the Council of Ministers' Article 36 committee, the group dealing with police and judicial liaison. A European Commission proposal on improved police and judicial co-operation is expected to be tabled later in 2005. Article reports on discussions concerning the Constitutional Treaty's provisions in this field. The Constitution, yet to be adopted, refers to a committee being set up within the Council to ensure 'operational co-operation on internal security' (COSI).