On Wednesday, 21 October, Home Affairs ministers from EU Member States discussed the future of Europol and adopted a 10-point action plan.
According to a press release from the German Presidency of the Council of the EU, the ministers, who discussed the matter via videoconference, stressed that Europol must remain the central agency and information platform for fighting crime in the EU, pending the new mandate expected in December. Europol must be a place of support for Member States, especially logistical support, and a place of innovation in the fields of scientific crime detection, artificial intelligence, and large-scale data analysis.
The purpose of 10-point declaration is to provide a reminder of the agency’s added value and the fact that it has been working well from The Hague. “There is no ambition” to decentralise the agency in Member States. Moreover, the declaration reiterates that Europol “is an established actor and partner in the European Police Partnership. There is a clear division of tasks between the Member States and Europol’s support function”. The third point concerns its role in the European and global security architecture, and ministers note that “Europol does not have the mandate or resources to undertake international capacity building”.
The text goes on to say that joint steering with Member States has been a success, as has the involvement of the European Commission, which has the right to vote as part of the Management Board. Thus, the ministers seem to be refusing to make a change.
They want to continue “strengthening [the agency’s] core tasks”: namely, information on crime in the EU and operational support. With regard to innovation, Europol must be able to harness the potential of technology with the use of artificial intelligence and encryption. The declaration also covers cooperation with the private sector, notably online platforms in the event of investigations into sexual crimes involving children, terrorism, or financial crime.
Link to the declaration: https://bit.ly/3oi012A (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)