EU: Semi-official groups revealed
01 November 1995
A written answer to a question in the Belgian Senate has revealed the expanding network of various semi-official and unofficial organisations which link the police forces, immigration services and intelligence and security services across Europe and beyond.
The question, put by a member of the Agalev fraction, related to unofficial and semi-official structures including why they were formed, what legal basis they had, who the membership consisted of, how often they met, what they discussed and what results they had achieved so far.
In his answer the Minister Vande Lanotte covered eight separate organisations: the Star group and the Pompidou group both dealing with drug abuse; the Vienna group and the Berlin Club which cover migration; the Bern club and the Kilowatt system, which are intelligence networks and the Cross Channel Conference and the Police Working group.
The STAR group is a German-inspired organisation and most of its membership consists of German national and regional police services. The USA were involved from its founding owing to the large number of US army personnel stationed in Germany. The organisations network therefore includes the Drugs Enforcement Agency and Customs Service as well as the US military police. Other nations involved with the Star group are France, Austria, Switzerland and the Benelux countries. The answer shows that Interpol has joined the group.
The Pompidou group also deals with drugs. Its brief however is broader, touching all aspects of drugs from the international drug trade through to health care and the impact of drugs on youth. Its membership includes all of the EU countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Switzerland, San Marino, Malta, Norway and Poland. The European Commission has observer status.
The Vienna group and the Berlin group were both formed to combat migration. Areas covered by the group include visa policy, asylum procedures and providing aid to counties who tend to be areas of high emigration. The membership of the Vienna group consists of the EU member-states, Liechtenstein, the countries of the former Eastern block, San Marino, Switzerland, Malta, Turkey, Cyprus , the Baltic States and the Vatican. The answer reveals that the membership has been expanded to include the USA whilst Australia has gained observer status. A number of international institutions are also linked in with the Vienna group. These include the Council of Europe and the European Commission, the International Labour Organisation, The International Migration Organisation, the G-24 group, The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The Berlin group comes out of the 1991 Berlin conference, which was organised to co-ordinate the "fight against uncontrolled migrations". The conference led to a number of working groups being formed from European immigration services. The membership of these groups consists of countries who attended the original conference: All EU countries, the Baltic states, the countries in the former eastern block together with Switzerland, Norway and Turkey.
The Bern Club and the Kilowatt group are far more secretive organisations. Vande Lanotte refused to answer any questions on the Kilowatt group, beyond revealing that the organisation which was set up to fight against Middle-eastern terrorism is still in operation. He was more forthcoming on the Bern Club, "an informal gathering of civil servants from the European intelligence and security services". Its aim is to "co-ordinate activity in the exchange of information relating to counter-espionage and subversive terrorism in order to head of any threat of either individuals or groups to the member states taking part". Membership of the group is secret, although as Belgium has allocated responsibility for liaising with this group to the Ministry of Justice it can now be assumed that Belgium should<