ABOUT EUROPOL - AND WHAT THEY ARE DOING

Today I want to tell briefly about EUROPOL – and what they are doing.

Serious crimes do not respect borders between countries. They take place across borders to an ever larger degree. And it is certainly not old-fashioned border barriers, which will stop them. It requires a close and binding cooperation between the police forces of countries.

EUROPOL is an EU Agency, which is a close and very active police cooperation between the 27 EU member states national police forces. It was created in 1993, has it headquarters in The Hague in the Netherlands and has today more than 1000 staff. EUROPOL is in charge of or deals with about 40.000 cross-frontier police projects each year.  One of their ongoing actions is to publish a list of Europe's Most Wanted.    EUROPOL also runs a special centre fighting cybercrimes.

From May 2017 EUROPOL has been fully integrated in the European Union. This means that only member states which are fully taking part in the judicial cooperation in the EU can take part as full members of EUROPOL.  Denmark not being fully part of the judicial cooperation is therefore no longer a full member of EUROPOL.  Before May 2017 Danish police in average used EUROPOL and its data bases every 8 minutes. This has now become much more difficult and slow. And after the UK will leave the EU that country can no longer be a member of EUROPOL either.

After the United Kingdom left the EU from January 31, 2020 they are no longer a member of EUROPOL.  The ongoing negotiations between EU and the UK will also deal with how a possible cooperation between EUROPOL and the Britisk authorities can take place.

From May 2018 the director of EUROPOL is Mrs. Catherine De Bolle, former head of Belgium's police forces.

You can get more information in many languages on EUROPOL's home page:  https://www.europol.europa.eu/ 

It is also possible to subscribe to their electronic Newsletter free of charge.

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