The Chairman of the European Parliament’s PEGA Committee of Inquiry, Dutch MEP Jeroen Lenaers (EPP), wrote to Europol’s Executive Director Catherine de Bolle on Monday 3 October asking her to use the Agency’s new prerogatives to assist Member States in criminal investigations and to suggest an investigation into a specific crime, the PEGA Committee announced on Twitter.
While the new Regulation 2022/991 of the Agency provides that this possibility to suggest an investigation - which may concern only one Member State, but which would affect the general European interest - may be refused by Member States, the PEGA Committee nevertheless invites the Director of Europol to implement it.
The Committee considers that the succession of scandals concerning the tapping of citizens, opponents or journalists by governments using spyware - in Greece, Poland, Hungary or even within the European Commission (Commissioner Didier Reynders was tapped in 2021) - notably affects Article 2 of the EU Treaty and falls under several crimes defined in national or European laws, such as corruption.
Link to the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/3d0 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)