Santiago de Compostela, 15/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - EU Member States are in favour of the European Police Office being involved in joint investigations and generally agreed to give it the right to launch investigations, announced Spanish interior minister Mariano Rajoy in Santiago de Compostela, where the EU's justice and home affairs ministers were meeting for an informal Council session. Sweden did not disguise its disagreement on this issue (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.8) but Mr Rajoy told journalists that they had a clear framework and the conclusions of the Tampere European Council set out that Europol must be able to participate in investigations and launch investigations. Member States must also be able to guide Europol's work by setting priorities. They seem to agree that Europol should concentrate on terrorism, clandestine immigration, drugs trafficking and euro counterfeiting. The Presidency also pointed out that they were loving towards Europol being given access to the Schengen system's databases.
Relations between the Member States and the European Police Office remained "ambivalent", commented one European diplomat, after Member States at the Council once again criticised the way that Europol operates. Germany and the Netherlands made some of the sharpest criticisms and Scandinavian countries again raised the question of democratic control of Europol, although all agreed that Europol had to be reformed and that they control it themselves since it is a purely intergovernmental body. While views are mixed, there are also divergences over how Europol's working methodology should be changed, recognised the Spanish interior minister Mariano Rajoy. At a press conference, neither Mariano Rajoy nor European Commissioner Antonio Vitorino denied the criticisms, preferring to concentrate on the fact that Europol was a young institution that had been difficult to set up in a domain where co-operation was also young and it would need time to develop. It had taken fifteen years to set up Europol but it had only really been operation for the last three years, explained the Commissioner, stressing that it was a useful tool with great potential. He told ministers that they should use Europol and provide it with information before putting it down. Mariano Rajoy commented on the discussions by stressing that the Member States desired to improve Europol's work.