Europol, a federal police in a non-democratic EU? And what do the citizens think about it? After all, they are the ones who take the kicks...
Germany keen on developping European FBI
Thursday 04 January 2007
Four days after taking over the EU presidency, Germany is ready to go for further integration. The German daily Die Welt am Sonntag recently published an article showing that the interior ministers of Germany, Portugal and Slovenia, the three countries assuming the presidency during the next 18 month, are calling for a strenghtening of the powers of Europol to combat cross-border crime. The three ministers Wolfgang Sch?uble, Antonio Costa and Dragutin Marte even pleaded for giving police “executive powers” in member states other than their own in exceptional circumstances (e.g. The World Cup).
The European Commission is calling for Europol to become a European agency, a community body no longer based on intergovernmental cooperation. That change would increase the power of the Parliament. EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini is quoted saying, “we need to give Europol a modern legal framework”, which would involve extending its mandate to serious crime – in Le Monde’s words – “organised or not.”
For now, German interior minister Wolfgang Sch?uble's priority for the German presidency is to extend the use of fingerprinting and biometric data. He is quoted saying « the establishment of a European system of information on visas and the future recourse to biometric data and fingerprints should become essential elements in European cooperation in the fight against illegal immigration, visa trafficking, international terrorism and organised crime ».
But the particularities of European integration are such, that minor changes are often made before the necessary structural changes. The first ones accumulate until the latter become inevitable. And yet Germany is keen on transforming Europol into a real European police, Le Monde reports. So let's all give a warm welcome to tomorrow's democratically uncontrolled brand new European FBI (and please, do not make any bad comment about it!).