EU in disarray over Europol Convention
01 January 1991
EU in disarray over Europol Convention
artdoc March=1995
The Justice and Home Affairs Council failed to agree on 30
November, the delay gives parliaments and civil liberties groups
the chance to question the lack of accountability and data
protection
Major areas of disagreement over the draft Europol Convention
came to the surface at the meeting of the Council of Justice and
Home Affairs Ministers in Brussels on 30 November - 1 December.
The German Presidency of the EU (July-December 1994) was
committed to getting the Convention signed at this meeting -
indeed it had signalled that this was to be its main achievement
under the `third pillar' (policing, immigration and judicial
cooperation) in the autumn of 1993.
The Working Party on Europol had held 28 meetings prior to this
Council and two more were scheduled for 6 and 7 December to tidy
up any loose ends prior to the full EU `Summit' meeting of Prime
Ministers in Essen, Germany on 9 and 10 December. In the event
the Ministers were further away from agreement than they had been
at the start of the German Presidency - on the present count
there have been at least 7 `draft' Europol Conventions.
In July the UK government's long-standing opposition to any
role being given to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in
determining disputes - either between the 12 states, the staff
and the Director, or individual members of the public remained
on the table. It was also known that Spain wanted terrorism to
be included in the objectives of Europol - this emerged at the
beginning of the year under the Belgian Presidency (January-June
1994). By the time of the `informal' meeting of the Justice and
Home Affairs Council in Berlin on 7 September neither of these
major questions had been resolved and a new set of objections
from France had emerged. The French Interior Minister, Charles
Pasqua, demanded that the so-called `architecture' of the Europol
computer data system be changed so that national police agencies
(in the UK, the National Criminal Intelligence System, NCIS)
would have access to both levels of intelligence to be stored.
There is no dispute that national police agencies should have
access to the first level - data put in by each of the 12/15
states. The French however also want access to the second level
- here after work by 'analysts' intelligence from more than one
source (say from 'third' countries) is to be held with a
high-level of security. By the time of the meeting on 30 November
none of these questions had been resolved, indeed it was to
become even more confusing as other countries started taking
sides in each of the issues - the Dutch government, for example,
came out emphatically in favour of the European Court of Justice
resolving disputes (their argument being that this was the first
of four Conventions to the Council would be considering and they
could not accept the ECJ being written out of all of them).
Greece and Denmark supported the Spanish case for terrorism to
be included. Spain was dismissive of an attempt by Germany to
introduce 'car crime' as one of the 'list of crimes' to be
covered - how they argued could it be justified to include 'car
crime' when terrorism was being excluded? Discussion over this
question then became confused with the French demand for access
to both levels of intelligence. The UK, Ireland, Denmark and the
Netherlands arguing that there could not possibly be access to
the 'sensitive' information held in the second level if this was
also to include intelligence on terrorist groups. While Greece
and Spain came in to support the French position, Germany back
the former countries in opposition. The ulterior motive of the
UK and Germany in opposing the inclusion of terrorism was to keep
the existing 'Trevi' network of Special Branches and internal
security agencies outside the purview of the Council (and hence
of any need to report on its work through the K4 Commit