Deal on new tasks for Europol to better fight crime

“The EPP Group welcomes the agreement to strengthen Europol’s mandate as it assigns very relevant new tasks to the Agency, notably on research and innovation and direct exchanges with private parties to fight the online dissemination of terrorist content and child sexual abuse material. At the same time, it provides additional data protection safeguards and ensures democratic accountability”, commented Javier Zarzalejos MEP after the successful conclusion of the negotiation between EU Member States, the European Parliament and the European Commission on the revision of the Europol Regulation. Zarzalejos participated in the negotiations on behalf of the EPP Group.

The Europol Regulation, which sets the tasks and working methods for the collaboration of national police authorities to combat organised crime and terrorism, has applied from 1 May 2017 to all EU countries, except Denmark, which has an opt-out from the Treaty's justice and home affairs provisions. The changes to the Regulation proposed by the Commission in December 2020 respond to Parliament’s calls to enhance Europol’s capacity to respond to new challenges.

Today's agreement between the co-legislators on the new Europol mandate means a substantial political boost to the European Security Union and responds effectively to the new demands of the fight against serious and organised crime and terrorism. “With the new mandate, Europol will significantly increase its capacity to support Member States' investigations through information processing and research on new digital tools. Now, for example, Europol may ask a Member State to launch a criminal investigation into a specific crime which affects a common interest covered by a Union policy but affects only that Member State. Europol also acquires a new role in feeding alerts into the Schengen Information System”, concluded Zarzalejos.