| Synopsis: |
Europol is the EU's law enforcement agency, which aims to achieve a more secure Europe through supporting Member States in their fight against serious organised crime and terrorism. On the 27 March 2013, the Commission published a proposal for a Europol Regulation. In this report, the European Union Committee considers the proposal, including concerns raised by the Government regarding some of its provisions, and concludes that the Government should opt-in to the Regulation so that it can play a full and constructive role in the negotiations.The draft Regulation is designed to achieve four main aims in addition to continuing the existing work of Europol to combat international organised crime, drug trafficking, terrorism, money laundering and cyber-crime: to strengthen and clarify the obligation for Member States to supply data to Europol in order for it to analyse and share the information; to enable Europol to establish links between the data already in its possession and analyse it more effectively by redesigning the agency's data processing structure; to merge Europol and the European Police College (CEPOL) into a single EU agency, located in The Hague; and to increase parliamentary scrutiny of Europol by the EU Parliament and national Parliaments. The EU Committee has already made it clear that they do not consider the Government to have made a convincing case for exercising the block opt-out from approximately 130 EU police and criminal measures - of which the UK's continuing engagement with Europol is one. |