Legal fight looms over Europol

Date: 18/06/1998

By Simon Coss

A COALITION of civil rights organisations is set to launch a legal challenge to the Europol police agency in Germany's constitutional court.

Claudia Roth, president of the European Parliament's Green Group, said last week's ratification of the Europol convention by Belgium - the last EU member state to approve the institution's charter - had paved the way for the challenge.

"Obviously I am not happy that the convention has been ratified, but it does now mean that we have the possibility to go to a national court. This was not possible before everyone had ratified," she said.

Roth and many other civil rights campaigners are concerned that the Europol convention does not contain the necessary checks and balances to ensure that sensitive personal data gathered by the agency cannot be misused. She is also unhappy that the agency's staff have been granted diplomatic immunity, when they appear not to be answerable to any clear authority.

The Green leader admits that pursuing the court action will be difficult, especially in the run-up to the German elections this September, but argues that she has sufficient legal weight behind her to mount a serious challenge.

"It will be difficult because Europol will be seen as a security issue during the election campaign, but many judges have told us we have a good case," she said. "I am convinced that Europol will give us more police powers, but less civic rights."

Jürgen Storbeck, the man who will be in charge of Europol when it opens for business on 1 October, hotly contests Roth's view of the way his agency will operate.

Storbeck argues that misconceptions relating to what the convention actually says about diplomatic immunity mean the issue has been blown up out of all proportion.

"Europol staff have less immunity than national diplomats, most parliamentarians or members of the European Parliament. It really is very limited immunity," he told European Voice, adding that the staff were answerable to the agency's Joint Supervisory Board with members from all EU countries.

He also argues that the civil liberties lobby's concerns over data protection are unfounded, although he concedes that in certain circumstances Europol would gather information on sensitive issues such as a suspect's political views or sexual orientation.

"Sensitive data of this nature would only be gathered if it were relevant to a particular case. We would not include information on a person's sexual behaviour in a drugs investigation, but in something like the Dutroux case you would need to know this," he explained, referring to the recent Belgian paedophilia scandal.

Similarly, Storbeck argues, data on an individual's political views would be relevant to many terrorist investigations or cases involving extremist groups such as neo-Nazis, although Europol's remit will not include such inquiries when it first opens for business.

The agency will ultimately be called on to help investigate political crimes, but its exact role in terrorist cases will not be clarified until next year. The terrorism issue is sensitive because it is a military rather than a police responsibility in some EU member states.

Since 1993, the Europol drugs unit has been carrying out many of the tasks that the fully-fledged police agency will take over in the autumn.

The biggest change after 1 October will be that the huge database which is essentially the heart of Europol will come online.

However, Storbeck admits that the super-computer will not be fully functional, giving national police forces instant access to its files, until at least 2000. "Until then people will have to continue working through our agents," he explained.