fake 50 and 100 euro notes started popping up all over Europe. Occasional arrests shed little light on who could be the masterminds behind the counterfeiting. After a few months, several European national police forces decided to pool all their information and send their case files to a heavily secured building in The Hague. There, a list of 250 suspects and 950,000 suspicious phone numbers was compiled.
"Making sense out of such a huge pile of information is our core business," said Tom Driessen, a deputy director for Europol, the European Police Office, based in the Netherlands. His organisation is a hub for information that can be useful for countries collected by the EU’s 27 national police forces. Europol is meant to be the EU’s answer to international organised crime.
A gang off the streets
A group of analysts working for Europol sifted through the phone numbers and list of suspects and managed to identify the structure of the entire gang. Last spring, 25 main suspects and a number of accomplices were arrested, putting an end to this Polish counterfeiting operation.
"Most countries lack the capability to carry out this type of analysis," Driessen said. "They also operate within a national perspective. It it is on these two aspects that we can add value."
Europol thus plays an important role in investigations of cross-border crimes such as human trafficking, illegal drug and arms trading, money laundering and other forms of financial fraud, and child pornography. Earlier this month, Belgian police arrested a network of Iraqis and Indians on suspicion of human trafficking. This week, Yesterday the German police arrested a group of Vietnamese allegedly involved in the same crime. Both received assistance from Europol.
Not knocking down doors
Driessen emphasised that Europol cannot be compared to the American FBI. You will never see Europol officers kicking down doors with their guns drawn. Its headquarters in The Hague mainly serves as a centre for data collection and analysis. If arrests need to be made based on these investigations, they are made by national police forces.
Even closer European cooperation is in the works. The Lisbon Treaty, which went into effect this December, creates ample room for it, both in the realm of police work and in collaboration between public prosecutors throughout Europe. Under the new treaty, a qualified majority among the 27 ministers of justice and internal affairs is now sufficient for decisions regarding police matters. Unanimity is no longer required, which means no single nation can block proposals for greater cooperation.
"It would be good if the process were sped up a little, because we often find ourselves playing a game of catch-up," Driessen said. "Europe has become a unified market for criminals too. Drug dealers and human traffickers run multinational operations. A criminal organisation can ship their drugs through Italy, launder the proceeds in England, and coordinate operations out of Paris, for example. To effectively investigate and gather evidence in such cases, you need to bring all this information together. That is our job."
Taking the lead
Driessen, a former Dutch police chief, said that, over the last few years, cooperation already improved greatly. "In the 1990s we only started to react when shipload full of drugs popped up on the horizon. Today, the EU is looking at ways to fight the overall influx of drugs. We have become more ambitious: we don’t just want to arrest a certain criminal or confiscate some drugs. We are analysing the entire process.”
He would like to see Europol become more pro-active. "We have established an extensive, secure and reliable network, and are successfully coordinating information. I’d like to take the process one step further. Europol could draft threat analysis regarding certain types of organised criminality and advise countries how to react and which other countries to join forces with. We want to do more than support and facilitate. We want to initiate."
Intensifying cooperation between police and public prosecutors would be another important step to better fight international crime. At the European level, this would mean closer cooperation between Europol and Eurojust, both headquartered in The Hague.
Eurojust’s setup is different from Europol. It is essentially an organisation where delegates from national prosecutorial offices facilitate cooperation and information exchange across borders. Eurojust only enters the picture after a judicial investigation has begun.
The European justice department
"In a perfect world, there would be no need for Eurojust," said Arend Vast, a former public prosecutor in the Netherlands, now the Dutch delegate to Eurojust. He pointed out that any prosecutor or investigating judge in the EU is free to contact colleagues in other countries. "But easy it is not. Within the union, we have 27 member states, 23 languages and 30 different systems of law, all with different powers and responsibilities. And not everybody speaks English or French."
Eurojust helps to transmit international requests for cooperation from judges or prosecutors in member states. It also coordinates larger investigations. "We are building bridges," Vast said. " Imagine a complex fraud case, with a criminal organisation that is active in six different countries. It would then be important to coordinate arrests, search warrants and impounding of property, but also to agree on how to prosecute."
Complicated cross-border cases are generally discussed at special meetings organised in The Hague. Smaller cases can be settled by quick direct contact between national representatives, who are down the hall. "A Swedish colleague informed me of a drug shipment coming in through the Netherlands and Germany, wondering if we could ensure ‘controlled delivery’, with a police observation team following the transport up to the national border, " Vast recounted. "The Swedes thought we wouldn’t comply, since a similar request in the past had them waiting for four days only to see it denied. I suggested that my Swedish colleague get himself a cup of coffee from the machine. In the meantime, I called a colleague in the Dutch national prosecutor’s office and asked him what we could do. When my Swedish colleague returned with his coffee, it was all arranged. Short lines of communication are important, as is the respect and trust you can build in personal contacts."
Towards a European prosecutor
Cooperation between European judicial partners has improved, but major obstacles remain. Vast expects that a European public prosecutor – an office made possible by the Lisbon Treaty – will be some time in the making. All the more important, he adds, to ensure that international coordination by the various national police corpses and public prosecutors is intensified in the meantime.
Both Driessen and Vast expect that the European Union will take steps towards closer cooperation in the coming months, when the Lisbon treaty has to be translated into practical arrangements . But, for the moment, executive powers will remain at the national level, with European organisations like Europol and Eurojust coordinating and helping where they can.
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