A growing number of European Parliamentarians want to focus the
Europol headquarters in The Hague by turning it into a European FBI.
According to them, despite mountains of anti-terrorism measures taken
since 9/11, things still go wrong in Europe because the security forces
continue to refuse to share information, AD reports.
In a terrorism debate, held three weeks after the attacks in
Brussels, almost the entire Parliament concluded that in every European
terrorist attack in recent years, the perpetrators were known suspects
in other countries. That’s why former Belgian Prime Minister Guy
Verhofstadt is proposing that Europe gets its own FBI – to make sure
that terrorist suspect in country X does not travel to country Y and
blow up a group of people there. Verhofstadt believes that turning Europol into a European FBI will be
relatively easy to arrange. New rules to add an anti-terrorist unit to
the service this year are already on the table. He has three more
suggestions for the service. Firstly make it responsible for European
intelligence. Give it the power to start its own investigations and
compel national authorities to cooperate. And forbid national Europol
cells from filtering information to headquarters.
NL Times
