As EU home affairs commissioner Magnus Brunner insists Brussels is not building a “European FBI”, MEPs are questioning how much power Europol could gain under a new proposal — from influencing national prosecutors to using information it is currently not allowed to use under existing rules.
Nikolaj Nielsen
The European Commission insists it is not creating a new EU FBI after proposing to strengthen Europol, the bloc’s police force based out of The Hague.
“We don’t want Europol to become a European FBI,” said Magnus Brunner, the EU home affairs commissioner. Speaking to European lawmakers on Thursday (25 June), Brunner said the agency will not have any own investigative competences. He repeated it twice.
But the law tabled earlier this week, the third in six years on Europol, allows the agency to demand that EU states launch investigations. If they refuse, they will have to explain why.
Article 11 of the bill allows the agency’s executive to request member states to initiate a criminal investigation. Capitals will have then have to examine the demand as a matter of priority and without delay. They will have one month to reply.
“Isn’t that a little bit [of] a first step to take over investigations?,” asked German socialist MEP Birgit Sippel.
“And what if Europol still believes it’s of urgent importance to do that, but member states give some reasons why they are not doing that. How do we deal with a possible conflict?,” she added.
Brunner dismissed the concern. “It’s not a first step, definitely not to take over, as you said, definitely not,” he said, without responding to the question over possible conflicts.
