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EU: New Europol Regulation: what the agency wants, the agency gets?

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04 August 2020

Europol, the EU's policing agency, has circulated a document to member state delegations in the Council's Law Enforcement Working Party (LEWP) setting out what it sees as the shortcomings in its current legal basis. The document is intended to inform discussion on a forthcoming legal proposal that will give Europol more extensive powers.

See: Europol's main operational considerations in light of the Europol Regulation (14 July 2020, EDOC#111977v3, pdf)

The document covers five areas:

• Europol's ability to process information - the agency calls for powers allowing it "to perform joint operational analysis with our stakeholders in major investigations", and for Europol to be able to process "'high volumes of data', involving sometimes terabytes of data," something which the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has banned Europol from doing due to the limits of its current legal basis;
• Europol's 'service provider' status - Europol wants clarification over how its infrastructure can be used to exchange information between the member states, with the document again highlighting the fact that the EDPS has put a halt to certain data exchanges due to a lack of legal basis;
• Europol's external relations regime - the document refers to the current procedure for negotiating agreements with non-EU states as "complicated, cumbersome and unbalanced," indicating that it wishes to see changes;
• Europol's possibilities to interact with private parties - the agency wants a relaxation or removal of limits on its ability to process data received from private parties (e.g. telecoms companies, internet service providers), as has already been called for by the Council in a set of conclusions published in 2019;
• Consideration's on Europol's staff - following in the footsteps of Frontex, Europol is seeking a more significant operational footprint, arguing that "there is also a need to establish a pool of 'guest experts'" along the lines of Frontex's "standing corps", which is currently being set up.

The five themes of the document reflect those highlighted in the Commission's 'Inception Impact Assessment' on the future revision of Europol's legal basis, which is expected to be published in December.

Prior to that, a high-level conference on Europol will be held in Berlin in October, following on from the annual European Police Chiefs Convention at the beginning of the month.

Statewatch submitted a response to the Commission's consultation which called for a thorough evaluation of the agency's powers, roles and tasks - as is required by the current Regulation - before any new powers are handed over.

See: Europol's main operational considerations in light of the Europol Regulation (14 July 2020, EDOC#111977v3, pdf)

Further reading

• Europol: Plans afoot to legalise unlawful acts (9 July 2020)