Lisbon unveils plan for European police college

Date: 06/07/2000

By John Shelley

A PLANNED police academy for Europe would train officers in the undercover crime-fighting and intelligence-gathering techniques needed to combat organised crime as well as providing for more basic skills such as languages, under draft proposals drawn up by Lisbon.

The paper, drafted by Portugal in the dying days of its EU presidency, also calls for the creation of a parallel electronic police college - a computer link between national police schools which could be used to distribute training material cheaply.

The academy would initially be just a network of national schools, as envisaged by EU leaders when they endorsed the initiative at their Tampere summit last October, although many member states are keen to set up a bricks-and-mortar college as soon as possible. "To begin with it has to be a network so that we can first get an idea of exactly what fields this level of co-operation can be helpful in," said a European Commission official.

The Portuguese paper says the college should aim to train senior law enforcers on how to fight international crime, teach them how other countries" justice systems work, and show how existing Union laws can be used to help combat crime. To achieve these goals, Lisbon suggests the project should run annual training sessions for senior police officers, draw up harmonised programmes for training middle-ranking officers on cross-border co-operation, and provide specialist training, including undercover and intelligence skills, for policemen fighting organised gangs. The paper also calls for the college to provide training for officers tasked with helping to enforce the law following crises in third countries.

Paris says it is keen to take the plans forward during its stint at the EU helm, even though the French government is among those member states which are sceptical about developing the project into an actual physical training centre based in one country. It has already promised a series of training sessions for policemen during its presidency - a move which insiders say is aimed at showing that a more rigid structure is not necessary. "I think they want to give an example of what informal training could be like. They want to show that it can be very efficient to do it like that," said one official.

A planned police academy for Europe would train officers in the undercover crime-fighting and intelligence-gathering techniques needed to combat organised crime as well as providing for more basic skills such as languages, under draft proposals drawn up by Lisbon.