European police agency faces further delays

Date: 25/09/1997

By Simon Coss

IT NOW seems highly unlikely that the EU's 15 member states will be able to keep their promise to ensure that the Europol police agency is fully operational by the end of the year.

The Europol Convention, which sets out the rules governing exactly how the agency will function, was formally approved by the June 1996 summit of EU leaders in Florence.

Six months later, heads of state and government pledged at their meeting in Dublin to complete the process of getting the treaty ratified by all 15 national parliaments by Christmas 1997. To date, however, only the UK has actually done so.

Of the other 14, the only country which has openly admitted it will not be ready on time is the Netherlands. Officials from The Hague told Union colleagues last week that the parliamentary process would not be completed by the deadline. But other member states are also lagging behind.

The front runners for second place in the ratification race are Spain and Denmark, although confusion surrounds exactly where the two are in the legal process. Madrid claims it approved the convention in April and duly informed the EU's Council of Ministers, but officials there say they have not yet received formal notification of this.

Meanwhile, despite rumours that Copenhagen completed its ratification some months ago, Danish diplomats have confirmed that the procedure is still under way, but say it should be finalised by the end of October.

Other member states are still at varying stages of the process. Lisbon has cleared the text, but it must still be signed by the country's president; the Belgian and Finnish parliaments hope to find time to debate the convention in October; while diplomats in Paris say that it will be presented to, and approved by, the French senate in December.

Sweden, Luxembourg and Ireland have indicated that they intend to ratify before the deadline, but have made no firm promises, while in Italy and Austria, parliamentarians are currently discussing the text.

Athens is hedging its bets, saying only that the document may be presented to parliament by the end of the year, and the Germans admit that while the ratification process is currently on schedule, there could still be problems with certain passages of the text.

Once fully up and running, Europol will essentially consist of three huge databases providing suitably vetted officials with instant access to information on criminal activity across the Union.

Supporters say this will prove a huge asset in tackling crimes such as drug trafficking, money laundering and the activities of paedophile rings.

However, the crucial data protection legislation allowing officials to access information as and when they need it is all contained in the as-yet unratified convention.