(the name is a contraction of European Police Office)

Europol is is the European Union's criminal intelligence agency, which became fully operational on July 1, 1999.

History

The establishment of Europol was agreed to in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The agency started limited operations on January 3, 1994, as the Europol Drugs Unit (EDU). In 1998 the Europol Convention was ratified by all the member states and came into force in October.

Europol allocates its resources (around 410 staff and 90 Europol Liaison Officers or ELOs) from its headquarters in The Hague. The size of Europol belies the fact that they are in constant liaison with hundreds of different law enforcement organisations, each with their own individual or group seconded to assist Europol's activities.

Currently Europol covers cooperation in all 25 member states of the European Union, with Estonia the last of the ten new EU states to ratify the Europol Convention on July 1, 2005.

Additionally, Bulgaria and Romania are already members of Europol, even though they are only set to join the EU in 2007. This also happened with some of the Central European countries which joined the EU in 2004; they became members of Europol in 2002 to make EU membership more gradual.

Functions

Europol's aim is to improve the effectiveness and co-operation between the competent authorities of the member states primarily by sharing and pooling intelligence to prevent and combat serious international organised crime. Its mission is to make a significant contribution to the European Union's law enforcement efforts targeting organised crime.

Europol has no executive powers. It is a support service for the law enforcement agencies of the EU member states. This means that Europol officials are not entitled to conduct investigations in the member states or to arrest suspects. In providing support, Europol with its tools – information exchange, intelligence analysis, expertise and training – can contribute to the executive measures carried out by the relevant national authorities.

Europol is a multi-disciplinary agency, comprising not only regular police officers but staff members from the member states' various law enforcement agencies: customs, immigration services, border and financial police, etc. Secondly, Europol helps to overcome the language barriers in international police co-operation. Any law enforcement officer from a member state can address a request to their Europol National Unit (ENU) in her/his mother tongue and receive the answer back in this language.

Three different levels of co-operation are possible: The first one is technical co-operation or to provide training. The next step is strategic co-operation aimed at exchanging general trends in organised crime and how to fight it and the exchange of threat assessments. The top level of co-operation includes the exchange of personal data and requires the fulfilment of Europol's standards in the field of data protection and data security.

Authorities

Europol's Director is appointed by the unanimous decision of the Council of the European Union. Since the contract of Europol's first director, Jürgen Storbeck of Germany expired in June 2004, Deputy Director Mariano Simancas (Spain) had been appointed Acting Director. Differences among EU Member States (France, Germany and Italy in particular) resulted in delays in appointing a new Director. On February 24, 2005, the Justice and Home Affairs Council finally selected Mr. Max-Peter Ratzel for the position of Europol Director. He took up his position as Director on April 16, 2005. Ratzel started his career in the BKA (Federal Criminal Police Office, Wiesbaden, Germany) in 1976, where he was the Head of the Organised and General Crime Department.

Europol is politically accountable to the Justice and Home Affairs Council via the Europol Management Board. The Council controls the appointment of Europol's Director and Deputy Directors. It also controls Europol's budget (2005; €63.4 million, financed from member state contributions, rather than the EU budget) and any legislative instruments it deems necessary for Europol.

The Europol Management Board is staffed with Interior Ministry officials with one representative from every participating member state. It meets at least twice per year and exercises political control over more routine staffing and budetary matters, amongst other things.

The Joint Supervisory Body oversees data protection in Europol and has two representative from each participating state's data protection supervisory body.

Financial supervision over Europol is aided by a committee of auditors drawn from the membership of the European Court of Auditors and known as the Joint Audit Committee. The Joint Audit Committee is not technically part of the European Court of Auditors as the Europol budget is not part of the overall EU budget. This unusual arrangement preserves the intergovernmental character of Europol.

The European Court of Justice has minimal jurisdicion over Europol with its remit extending only to limited interpretation of the Europol Convention.

The European Ombudsman, while not given a formal role in the Europol Convention, seems to have gained de facto recognition as a arbitrator in Europol matters relating to requests for access to documents and Europol staff disputes.

Web page: www.europol.eu.int

Source : http://ro.wikipedia.org, www.coursework.info,