Europol Drugs Unit
01 January 1995
The Europol Drugs Unit's (EDU) report to the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers shows that it is holding meetings the Heads of National Criminal Intelligence Services (and their Operational Heads) to encourage use of the Unit. The report says that some countries "are still participating infrequently". Since it moved to its headquarters on 16 February 1994 in the Hague the EDU had dealt with 146 requests broken down as follows: France 49, Italy 21, Germany 16, Netherlands 10, Ireland 10, Greece 9, Luxembourg 8, Spain 6, Denmark 6, Belgium 5, Portugal 3, and the UK 3.
The crime analysis reports being prepared by the EDU include: the African project (involvement of West and North Africans in drug trafficking); "the impact on the EU of eastern and central European drug-related areas of crime;; methods of transport; and the standardisation of intelligence reports. The budget of the EDU was 2.1 million ECUs in 1994, and 3.7 million ECUs in 1995.
Europol delay - Schengen go-ahead
The remit of the EDU was extended at the Essen Summit on 9-10 December last year to include nuclear crime, the smuggling of people ("illegal" immigration networks), vehicle trafficking (car crime) and associated money-laundering operations (see Statewatch, vol 4 no 6). The move followed the realisation that the draft Europol Convention, which may be agreed at the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers meeting in June, will probably take several years to get ratified by the 15 EU member states. Some progress was made at the informal meeting of the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers in Paris on 26 January. French demands for open access to Europol's analytical data are likely to be withdrawn now that it holds the Presidency of the EU. The Spanish demand also appears to have been met, terrorism will be included two years after the Convention is ratified (some 7 years hence). But the UK continues to object to the European Court of Justice having any role in adjudicating on people's action against Europol.
Until the Convention is ratified the EDU can only carry out a limited role. It was set up under a Ministerial Agreement in June 1993 and it not allowed to hold personal information centrally. The Agreement only contains very general data protection provisions with no defined rights of access or appeal, nor does it include any provision for accountability to the European or national parliaments.
The delay in progressing the draft Europol Convention contrasts with the final go-ahead for the Schengen Information System (SIS) for nine EU countries from the end of March (covering Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. Italy and Greece will join in when their police intelligence systems can be tied into the Schengen Information System (SIS). Austria and Denmark currently have observer status (see feature on Denmark in this issue). It go-ahead will see the dismantling of internal border controls between the Schengen member countries and the introduction of the SIS which will hold information on police files and immigration. The SIS, based in Strasbourg, is expected to hold 1.5 million files at the outset.
The countries outside of the Schengen Agreement are the UK and Ireland, Denmark and Austria (who are about to apply to membership), Sweden and Finland. Only the UK has a "principled" objection to joining on the grounds that it insists on maintaining border controls with the EU countries and refuses to allow entry to third country nationals resident in the EU.
Announcing the start date German Minister Bernd Schmidbauer said: "The Schengen Information System is the first fully functioning, internationally linked wanted persons system in Europe with online, real-time access".