Europol, the EU’s police cooperation agency, is supposed to support member states in the fight against migrant smuggling, yet it still cannot access relevant criminal databases or make full use of external information sources to do this job, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) concluded on Thursday 30 September in a report published the day after the Commission presented a new strategy against people smugglers (see EUROPE 12801/1).
“As a clearing house, Europol must have access to all relevant data sources and be able to use them systematically. This is not the case at the moment. We hope that our audit will be taken into account in the ongoing review of the Europol Regulation”, said the Court in a statement.
According to Europol estimates, about 90% of people crossing the EU’s borders illegally use smugglers, usually criminal groups engaged in other forms of crime, such as identity document fraud or human trafficking.
Since 2016, Europol has acted as a coordination and information exchange centre through a European centre for combating migrant smuggling, which is part of the European Centre for Combating Serious Organised Crime and receives a budget of €10 million per year.
And “the value of the service provided is largely dependent on the intensity with which its partners exchange information with it. In this respect, the auditors note a varying degree of commitment by Member States and that the data reported is sometimes incomplete”, the Court notes. Member States also sometimes have difficulties in entering data into dedicated Europol channels such as SIENA (‘Secure Information Exchange Network Application’) and are discouraged by the “administrative burden”.
Furthermore, Europol had difficulties in negotiating international agreements with priority third countries to obtain access to operational data from criminal investigations in countries of origin and transit and was not able to collect and analyse information directly from private parties to perform its tasks, the Court adds.
Europol also faces difficulties in exchanging data with other EU agencies, such as Frontex.
The Court therefore hopes that the ongoing reform of Europol (the EU Council already has the mandate and the European Parliament may adopt its own in mid-October) will address these shortcomings.
Link to the report: https://bit.ly/3CWUpl1 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)