Overview
- The European Commission has put forward a package to expand Europol’s role by doubling its budget to about €3 billion and roughly doubling staff to make the agency a central hub for EU police cooperation.
- The plan would build a Europol cloud, a police shared data space and technology and innovation hubs to enable real-time data sharing and deploy AI and advanced analytics across member-state investigations.
- The proposal would relax current rules that force pre-sorting of incoming data, allowing more automated ingestion and processing of personal and sensitive data including biometric information for analysis.
- Privacy watchdogs and civil society groups say the changes could let Europol store and process data on people with no suspected link to crime, and the EDPS has said it will prepare a formal opinion on the proposal.
- The package must still be negotiated and approved by member states in the Council and by the European Parliament, and its outcome will shape whether Europol gains operational powers beyond its current role of supporting national police.