Examination of Witnesses (Questions 167
- 179)
TUESDAY 24 JUNE 2008
Mr Max-Peter Ratzel
Q167 Chairman:
Director, good afternoon. Thank you again for entertaining us
in a way we had not expected and which we much appreciate. We
have a lot of questions we would like to ask you. You realise
you are on the record and I do not need to repeat what I said
earlier at lunch about the work of the Committee. Director, it
seems to me that you did say a number of extremely interesting
things to us over lunch, and if a moment came where you thought
it was appropriate to repeat them during the session we have with
you we would welcome that enormously. As far as politicians are
concerned, there are some politicians who think if they have said
something once there is no need ever to say it again, which is
an absolute myth because in politics you have to say it time and
time again. Can I begin by thanking you for your helpful evidence,
but you say that Europol plays an important role in the EU Architecture
of Internal Security by assessing EU-wide organised crime threats
and by producing intelligence in the framework of its Analysis
Work Files. What exactly is an Analysis Work File? Would you like
to explain in detail what that is?
Mr Ratzel: Thank you, my Lord Chairman.
First of all I would like to express Europol's gratitude for the
opportunity to provide you with answers to your questions. We
see this as an opportunity. We regard it as an acknowledgement
of our work here, and on behalf of the staff members of Europol
and the Directorate I really would like to express our appreciation.
Having been invited to give testimony I have also to tell you
that I will give you testimony as Director of Europol headquarters.
Sometimes it is necessary to make people aware that the word "Europol"
has to be understood in different ways. Europol itself can be
seen either as the headquarters, which is represented by me as
the Director, or it can be seen in a wider understanding as representing
all competent authorities in the Member States, including all
governing bodies, and, of course, I would not feel entitled to
speak on behalf of Europol in the wider understanding. You would
have to ask the Council, the Management Board and all the other
fora but also the competent authorities in the Member States,
but I guess that you are aware that I represent the headquarters
and I speak on behalf of the organisation; I am not speaking on
behalf of the liaison officers who are part of our local environment
here but are not part of Europol as headquarters under my control
and supervision. Having said this, let me come to your questions
in more detail. Analysis Work Files are quite sophisticated databases.
You may remember what I said earlier today, that Europol has three
major functions. We support Member States with three functionalities.
One is that we are an information facilitator. That means we provide
a technical platform where Member States can communicate with
each other. This technical platform is called an information exchange
system. In the future it will be replaced by a new platform which
will be called SIENA. This platform is accompanied, supplemented
and supported by a human factor, which is the liaison officers'
network. Together the liaison officers and the technical platform
provide the information facilitating role. The second functionality
is that we provide analysis to Member States, strategic analysis
for strategic purposes and operational analysis for very concrete
operational purposes. For that analysis we use our information
system but especially the Analysis Work Files and I will come
to that later on. The third functionality is that we provide operational
support. A pre-condition for operational support is that Member
States invite us to provide operational support and then we can
go on the spot and follow the demand and the invitation by the
Member States. However, it is necessary to mention that even when
they are on the spot our staff members do not have any coercive
powers. We do not arrest people, we do not seize drugs, we do
not search houses, but we can participate in these actions being
taken by responsible staff of the Member States, and also, of
course, we provide training and expertise on the spot when requested.
Let me come back to the Analysis Work Files. As I told you, this
is a very sophisticated type of database for supporting investigations
and providing various types of analysis to the operations and
investigations of Member States. As the intelligence-led policing
concept was introduced during the last few years, based on a decision
of the European Council taken in The Hague programme in November
2004, one of the elements was for Europol to gather information
from ongoing investigations, undergo crime analysis and feed back
the results. The information system itself mainly holds factual
so-called hard data on crimes, means of communication and means
of transportation, but the Analysis Work Files are more sophisticated
and more detailed. In the Analysis Work Files we can hold factual
hard data but also soft data. These Analysis Work Files (and at
the moment we are running 18 of them) can be dedicated to specific
crime phenomena, they can be dedicated to an ethnic approach,
they can be dedicated to a regional approach. It depends on the
setting of priorities, and, always adopting that approach, we
collect data in a systematic way from those Member States which
participate in the Analysis Work Files and provide them with an
analysis of those data. Unlike the information system, where all
the Member States are duty bound to participate, it is up to the
individual Member State to explain and declare their willingness
and readiness to participate in up to all 18 Analysis Work Files.
Of course, if you have an Analysis Work File which is very specific
for three or four or five Member States not all 27 Member States
may participate, but, as we can see now, the majority of the Member
States would like to participate in as many Analysis Work Files
as possible. To give you a short overview, we have two Analysis
Work Files dealing with terrorism issues. We have another one
dealing with money laundering. We have another one dealing with
counterfeiting of products and the counterfeiting of money, mainly
counterfeiting of euros but also of the British pound. We have
another Analysis Work File dealing with trafficking in human beings,
another one dealing with illegal migration and another dealing
with eastern European organised criminals. You see there is a
big variety of Analysis Work Files. The data holder and the data
owner is still the Member State which provided the information
to us, so we strictly regard the ownership principle. The Member
States can provide us with various so-called handling codes to
determine what should be happening with the data once it is provided
to Europol. Is it only to be used at Europol for analysis purposes?
Can it be shared with another Member State participating in Analysis
Work Files? Can it be shared with third partners? Can it be used
for police purposes only or can it be used for judicial purposes,
or can it not be transferred to somebody else without prior consultation?
This handling code provides the data owner with a very high safeguard
so they know that the data may be analysed but it will not be
transferred to somebody else unless there is a reconfirmation
with the data owner. In practice the Analysis Work Files are very
well established and very well appreciated. These Analysis Work
Files are run by so-called project managers at Europol, persons
with specific training and specific skills. The data are stored
in the English language only and all the data insertion and data
retrieval has to go via the specific data project manager, so
we have a really high safeguarding institution for data protection
and data security but also for confidentiality. As I said, these
Analysis Work Files mainly serve operational purposes leading
to operational analysis.
Q168 Chairman:
You talk about security. My previous experience with the EEC,
as it used to be, and with NATO, where I have an involvement now,
is that the level of security is pretty poor on the whole. Are
you satisfied that the level of security here is more closely
controlled and more secure, if I may put it that way, than in
some other organisations?
Mr Ratzel:[27]
I do not really feel entitled to compare the level of security
at our organisation with the level of security at other organisations.
I do not have benchmarks for that but I can tell you how we have
implemented security here at Europol and I am confident to tell
you that the level of security is improving step by step and meanwhile
we have achieved a considerable level of security. When we talk
about security we take into consideration various aspects—physical
security, technical security, vetting of people, screening of
people, handling of data, safeguarding of data, etc. Security
is a rather wide term. We have established at Europol a Security
coordinator who is in charge of security. This must be, following
the Council Decision, a Deputy Director, so even the appointment
of the person in charge of security indicates that it must be
a person who is appointed by the Council. That demonstrates that
security issues are considered of very high importance. This is
the first step. For that purpose that person is not under my governance,
so he is independent and chairs the Security Committee. The Security
Committee, in which all the Member States participate, advises
the person in charge of security and in that security co-ordinating
function he is independent from my tasking. If the security co-ordinator
decides that something is wrong with security within Europol he
informs me and advises me what to do. If I do not follow the advice,
if I am not able to follow it, if I am not willing to follow it
or if I am not successful in following it, this person informs
the Management Board what was the advice, what has been done by
the Director and what nevertheless has not been achieved so far.
That gives you a clear indication of the strong role of the security
co-ordinator. Internally in the organisation we have in addition
a unit which is dedicated to dealing with security in the wider
understanding for data protection, data security and confidentiality,
and at the same time this unit serves the security co-ordinator
as a secretariat in his role of having the Security Committee
guided. In addition, we have a security officer in the organisation
who is in charge of looking for security issues every day in practical
terms and also, as far as necessary, of dealing with internal
inquiries. These internal inquiries are then done under my command.
The head of the unit, who is in charge of data protection, data
security and confidentiality is at the same time the data protection
officer of the organisation. Working in that function as data
protection officer he is not under the line of command. He has
direct access to me and he advises me what to do on data protection
issues. He is also my liaison person to the Joint Supervisory
Body which is looking after data protection issues at Europol.
Our aim in the last three to five years has been to introduce
a holistic view on security into the organisation. That has been
quite a challenge as our staff members come from 27 different
Member States with 27 different cultures and understandings in
relation to security. What we see as a challenge overall but also
in security is that we have to establish a common understanding
when we use certain terminology, a common understanding of how
to apply that terminology and what has to be done in order to
achieve the necessary level of security. In addition we have to
ensure that the Member States which are dealing with our products
have the same understanding of security and the same or similar
procedures in place as we cannot ensure the security of documents
once they are handed out, for example, as hard copy. At the moment
when they are handed out as a hard copy they are under the responsibility
of the Member State concerned even if the person is sitting in
Europol premises, so the moment we hand out the hard copies the
responsibility is transferred. But this has to be discussed and
debated with the Member States every day and from time to time,
when security incidents happen, we make a clear analysis of what
has happened and the major issue is to learn from these mistakes
and these incidents and avoid them in the future. This is done
in a joint exercise with the security co-ordinator and myself
with the involvement of the Security Committee. I have to inform
the Management Board Chairman in case of a serious breach of security
and we have to learn the lessons and we do this as far as possible.
Q169 Chairman:
Just let me try and encapsulate this. On a scale of one to ten
how much of a worry is security to you?
Mr Ratzel: To be really clear, I am not
100% sure that I get your question.
Q170 Chairman:
Ten meaning you rarely sleep at night and one meaning that you
really do not worry about it at all.
Mr Ratzel: I would say we are close to
two.
Q171 Lord Marlesford:
Director, I would like to ask you about the linkage between Analysis
Work Files and Organised Crime Threat Assessments, but I would
like first if I may to get slightly more detail on the Analysis
Work Files. First of all, am I right in thinking you said there
were 18 in total?
Mr Ratzel: Yes.
Q172 Lord Marlesford:
Each of these is presumably a live file, is it? It is not a report
which is then put away in a pigeonhole, and it is presumably mainly
held on computers. Is it something you can print out a hard copy
of, or is it so massive that it would not be possible? Some of
the subjects you mentioned—money laundering, counterfeiting,
et cetera, presumably mean that these files are huge databases
in themselves. Is that correct?
Mr Ratzel: You are correct. These are
living files so they are on the computer. Of course, whatever
is on the computer in principle you can print out, but that would
not make much sense. The work file gets well used, not by just
having the data. The value of the work file is in, let us say,
two or three components. One component is the collection of the
data itself, which is the database. The second component is to
have the proper software established to investigate or mine the
database, and the third component is to have a very skilled and
very professional analyst to do the crime analysis on these data.
The analyst has first to study the case and has to learn, together
with the investigators, what the investigators are looking for
and how far can he support them. That would be one approach or,
if the investigators do not have a clear picture, his approach
would be, "What is my feeling from the work file? What can
I offer to the investigator to do as an analysis?". Crime
analysis can be done in various different ways. What you can do
is for example, a profiling analysis. You can also do linkage
analysis. You can do crime scene analysis as well. You can analyse
the modus operandi, you can analyse the dates of the events,
you can analyse the places of the events, et cetera, and you can
mix up the various approaches, so a close interaction is needed
between the people who do the analysis and those people who are
investigating the case. That is exactly one of the triggering
points with intelligence-led policing. This is one of the words
which is understood in very different ways by different persons.
Some investigators feel tortured by intelligence-led investigations
as they misunderstand the concept, while others, understanding
the concept differently, see the advantage that they provide the
data to an analyst and the analyst gives them a feedback on what
could be done with the data, what could be the result of the data
analysis. When we print out the Analysis Work File that will not
support an investigator, so what we print out is the result of
the analysis, and the result of the analysis can be printed out
in lists, it can be printed out in charts, it can be printed out
in drawings; it depends very much on the purpose for which you
need it. We have established and introduced software to do that.
We have also introduced now a new system to support the analysts
in the insertion process of the data, so with the new software
which was recently introduced we have now minimised the workload
for the analyst in introducing the data and inserting it into
the database, which gives more space for the analysts to do the
crime analysis. We have shifted the workload from pure typing
in data to doing more crime analysis.
Q173 Lord Marlesford:
That is very helpful. Can I take it that each of the Analysis
Work Files has a manager responsible for it? Do I gather from
what you said that the analysts and the manager, the in-house
Europol staff running the Analysis Work Files, are not the same
as the investigators and that the investigators are likely to
be from national police forces? Is that correct?
Mr Ratzel: It is a little bit more complicated.
When we talk about the investigators, at least as I understand
the word now, and I have to admit that I am not a native English
speaker so there may be slightly different understandings, but
even in my mother tongue—
Q174 Chairman:
You are doing very well.
Mr Ratzel: Thank you, but even in my
mother tongue I see that sometimes we use the same word and we
have a different meaning for that. When I speak about an investigator
I have in mind the person who is really investigating the case.
People doing crime analysis should be people with a professional
knowledge on investigations and people with knowledge in crime
analysis. We try to achieve this, as we have done in our professional
units which deal, for example, with counterfeiting of euro currency,
terrorism, organised crime. We have a mixture of people with a
professional background in counterfeiting of euro currency, terrorism
or organised crime. We call them experts. As a standard they have
a law enforcement background. They may have been or are still
police officers, customs officers, border guard officers, whatever
is their background, or they may have more specific skills in
crime analysis. Some of them have been police officers in the
past and have achieved additional analytical skills or are people
who have been educated and skilled as analysts. Even in these
specialised units, let us say, SC5 for terrorism, we always look
from two viewpoints in the crime analysis—from the pure
analytical viewpoint and from the expert viewpoint. In addition
we link these viewpoints with the investigators in the various
Member States who participate in this Analysis Work File. We establish
meetings, we invite people to meetings and the people from the
Member States come here. This is one of the reasons why we need
meeting rooms. We sit together round a table and very often it
requires some time to open the mind and introduce the relevant
knowledge on the ongoing crime situation and then to understand
what could be introduced into the database from country A, B or
C, and what would be expected to be retrieved from the database
from the same countries or from other countries. This would be
the platform for the next step, and in regular repeated actions
meanwhile the participating countries and the participating Analysis
Work File members come here and exchange best practice experience
but also give a feedback to us on whether our products fit their
expectations or if we have to adjust the products to the expectations.
This happens either by meetings, when we invite people from the
Member States to come here, or they are represented by their people
from the liaison desk. It depends on the nature of the meeting,
on the availability of people, on the availability of money to
provide people with funds to travel to Europol, et cetera.
Q175 Lord Marlesford:
I can see it is a hugely valuable asset. What I am not clear about,
and you can, I am sure, reassure me, is this. If you have 18 AWF
presumably all police forces in Member States have a list of the
subjects so they are aware of the Analysis Work Files you maintain,
just in outline, just the headings maybe, which may merely say
"Money Laundering". If you take a country like the United
Kingdom, where there are over 40 separate police forces, would
each of those police forces have such a list so that they know
that if, for example, the Suffolk police (from the part of England
I come from) are looking at people trafficking through Felixstowe,
which is our biggest port, would they immediately be coming and
talking to you or discussing the contents of your people trafficking
Analysis Work File?
Mr Ratzel: There are various elements
in your question which lead me to the conclusion that I should
give you a clear indication that we have a very structured system
of co-operation. The system foresees that our contact points are
the Europol National Units. On purpose Europol has been established
with, until now, 27 antennas in the Member States, so for the
time being we are not entitled to directly contact people in the
field and people in the field are not entitled to directly contact
us. This has been done on purpose and there are also some good
reasons for that, to be honest, as we could not survive being
contacted by, let us say, a thousand different police organisations
throughout the Continent, but, as always, if you have a certain
advantage you have also a disadvantage in that it is always via
the Europol National Unit. By the way, we recently established
a third protocol on Europol amending our Convention which will
allow us to have direct contact with the field officers in the
Member States in particular cases when the Europol National Units
allow us to do so, but even here some Europol National Units are
rather reluctant. They would like to have control of the traffic
of information. The second point in your question was, is it known
all over the Continent what the Europol platform is offering to
all of you? Here also I would have a differentiated views. I raised
the question some time ago in a meeting and the representative
of one Member State immediately said, "Yes, in my country
everybody knows exactly about Europol and all the offers you have
available". I contested that but he was very firm in his
assessment. Another representative at the same level from another
Member State said, "No, you are right. In my Member State
the awareness is not yet that far developed". My experience
tells me the second one was right. I see a lot of colleagues when
I go to the national meetings who afterwards contact me and say,
"That was very interesting. Where can we learn more about
Europol?", so the question of awareness is an ongoing issue.
I see a lot of reports from my staff members coming back from
meetings in the field and even they experience that a lot of the
opportunities and offers by Europol are not really known to everybody.
My point is that very often, when we have here ministers to visit
us or police chiefs or people from the training institutions,
I advocate establishing Europol modules even in basic training.
Young police officers should nowadays learn about Europol from
the very beginning. They do not necessarily have to be experts
in Europol co-operation but they should know about it. They should
know about the differences and the complementary ways of using
Europol, Interpol, bilateral relations, Schengen Information System,
the Prüm Treaty, whatever is on the market, but there is
still a long way to go and therefore I would strongly advocate
starting with the training. It is much easier to put it in the
training sessions for young police officers or customs officers
to make them aware of Europol and all the opportunities we offer
for them as we are established to support the Member States. Our
single task is to support Member States' investigations.
Q176 Lord Marlesford:
Going on from that, the Analysis Work Files, which are really
an agenda for your work, are based on the Organised Crime Threat
Assessments, and you are attempting to align these very closely.
Is that a satisfactory way of doing it or are you limited in your
Work Programme by what another organisation, the EU Council, lays
down in the form of the Organised Crime Threat Assessments?
Mr Ratzel: To answer the question I would
like to go back in history a little bit. As I said before, the
Council took a decision at the Hague Council in November 2004
to introduce intelligence-led law enforcement as a concept in
Europe and at the same time they tasked Europol to draft the first
Organised Crime Threat Assessment for the year 2006. Prior to
that there was no Organised Crime Threat Assessment; there was
only an Organised Crime Report. There is a huge difference between
these two products as the Organised Crime Report was looking backwards,
was mainly based on historical statistical data, was not looking
forward and was not based on qualitative data. As a logical consequence,
until the year 2007 all our work plans could not have been based
on an OCTA as the OCTA as such did not exist. Following that Council
decision we did our utmost—and we were very much supported
by the British Presidency in the second semester of 2005—to
draft the Organised Crime Threat Assessment by the end of the
year 2005 and to make it ready for the Council to be endorsed
in the first semester of 2006. This was quite a complicated and
heavy exercise as we had overcome a lot of difficulties in the
Member States. For many Member States it was the first time that
they had been tasked and entitled at the same time together to
collect data centrally. Some of them did not even have any central
data collection plan, so we provided them with a data collection
plan. We provided them with a questionnaire and we got feedback
which was quite different from Member State to Member State. To
give you a short overview, the smallest feedback was one page;
the largest more than 300 pages, and everything in between. About
ten different languages were offered, so we had to translate them,
with all the complications that brings, and it was quite complicated
to draft at the end the first Organised Crime Threat Assessment.
Based on the Organised Crime Threat Assessment in 2006 and later
on in 2007, the Council took conclusions on the priorities to
be followed at the European level but (and this is sometimes forgotten)
to be followed also at the national level, so for each minister
who is part of the Council and at the same time is a minister
back home to introduce the priorities in the police and the judiciary.
On the other hand, the European institutions are also tasked to
follow the priorities—Europol, Eurojust, Frontex, OLAF,
SitCen, whoever is in charge. In the year 2007 we made a comparison
between the Analysis Work Files, which had been established until
then, and the priorities set by the Council and we found out that
our setting of priorities by the Analysis Work Files was to a
very high level in cohesion with the priorities set by the Council,
and since then we have seen that whenever we have to establish
a new Analysis Work File there must be a link to the Organised
Crime Threat Assessment; otherwise it would not be a priority
for the Member States, so there is a natural cohesion between
the two instruments and for the time being all of our 18 Analysis
Work Files fit into these priorities. I would not exclude the
possibility of opening new Analysis Work Files if there was an
urgent need which had not been foreseen in the last Organised
Crime Threat Assessment, but I am quite confident that that would
lead to a new priority for the next Organised Crime Threat Assessment,
so there should be a rather close link between the two instruments
and, for example, last time the Organised Crime Threat Assessment
2007 led to the conclusion that we had to establish a new Analysis
Work File on MTIC fraud which has recently been opened.
Q177 Baroness Garden of Frognal:
Director, could I turn to Europol's operational role? When you
spoke to the European Parliament in October 2006 you called for
a more operational role for Europol. Does the new Council Decision
on Europol fulfil your wish?
Mr Ratzel: "Operational" is one
of the really complicated words in police terminology. Many people
have a completely different understanding of what is meant by
"operational". When I use the word "operational"
I mean that Europol should be more linked to operations in the
Member States rather than be linked too much to the administrative
burden. Although I accept governance but I am still of the opinion
that the major task for Europol should be to be more operational,
to support the investigations in Member States. Some of these
expectations have been fulfilled by the new Council Decision.
For others there is still room for improvement, and let me try
to give you some indications of that. One of the points where
we clearly see progress is that our mandate was slightly amended.
Until now we have been in charge of supporting Member States in
fighting terrorism and organised crime. That requires that we
have clear indications and evidence almost that there is an organised
crime structure behind the crime in order to be in charge of that.
With the new Council Decision our mandate is slightly amended
to terrorism and serious international crime. That sounds very
close to organised crime but it is quite different. For the time
being there are three case examples where we cannot really support
the Member States. One of them is a serial killer. The serial
killer is not part of an organised crime structure, so for the
time being it is not part of the Europol mandate. If child pornographic
material is distributed in a loose network which cannot be considered
to be an organised crime structure we cannot support the Member
States. That is the second case example, and the third case example
is if we have travelling violent perpetrators, for example, determined
to disturb sports events, political events or economic events.
For the time being we cannot support Member States with that.
As these case examples will be included in our future task this
is clearly a way in which we can be more involved in operational
matters. Also, on the administrative side, we see some progress.
For the time being, the Management Board, for example, is guided
by the Presidency, so every six months we have a new person as
the chairperson of the Management Board. That leads to different
behaviour of the Board, it leads to a different governing situation,
it leads to limitations in operational issues. I have been here
now for nearly three and a half years. If I am not mistaken I
have now had eight or nine different heads of the Management Board.
Some of them came new to the function with the Presidency so they
had no background in the Management Board; they had no background
in Europol. You can imagine that this is not to the advantage
of the organisation and it is not to the advantage of the operational
branch, and we have had to learn lessons every time from scratch,
both of us, the Chairman of the Management Board and myself and
the directorate members. This is now a new situation. In future
there will be the Management Board Chairman for 18 months, which
will give us certainly streamlining without neglecting the responsibility
of the Board as such, but if we have a chairperson for 18 months
that will give us some more streamlining and some more operational
opportunities.
Q178 Baroness Garden of Frognal:
Yes, it has gone from six months to 18 months, has it not?
Mr Ratzel: Yes.
Q179 Baroness Garden of Frognal:
The Decision also puts responsibility on the Heads of National
Units to discuss proposals that will improve Europol's operational
effectiveness, encourage commitment from Member States and evaluate
the reports and analyses drafted by Europol. Are they well-placed
for this operational oversight?
Mr Ratzel: It is quite complicated and
difficult to give that answer. As far as I can see some of the
heads of the Europol National Units are well placed. Some others
I would have question marks about, but, of course, I do not know
in detail the national structures of all security agencies in
the national environment. What I can see is that some Heads of
Europol National Units have influence on what is to be done operationally
back home. Some others do not have a strong influence. This depends
on their rank, it depends on the operational structure and it
also depends on the national security structure. Let me give you
two different examples. If you go to a state like Germany there
will be the CID police, the federal police, and on the federal
level the customs and on the state level 16 police forces. That
is quite a complicated structure, and the Head of the Europol
National Unit who is sitting in the federal CID structure can
only ask the others; he cannot task somebody. If you go to a state
like France everything is centralised but you have the Police
Nationale, the Gendarmerie and customs, which are quite independent
from each other, and also there it is difficult to find a common
approach. In addition we have to say that the Heads of the Europol
National Units are our major link to the operational branches
in the Member States, so they are decisive for us. They have to
advise us what we should do but at the same time we expect them
to commit themselves to do what has been agreed next door to here.
Once they go back home and they have committed themselves that
we should insert more data into that Analysis Work File, we should
insert more data in the information system, we should go for that
approach, we should have that priority, I would expect them to
do so back home. But some of the Heads of the Europol National
Units are not even represented here at the meetings. They have
no time, there is no money available, and they send the liaison
officers here and then it becomes complicated as in reality the
liaison officers are part of the Europol National Units, so then
I am not 100% sure if all the commitment is then transferred back
home and if it is shared back home and if it is distributed into
the Member States. This is one of the complicated issues I face
every day. When we confront the Member States, for example, with
the situation that for the time being we do not have the relevant
data in the information system, that we do not have enough data
in the information system, nobody is really receiving the message
and putting it into action back home. If I confront the Management
Board with that the answer is, "We are the Management Board.
We are guiding the organisation but we are not guiding our people
back home". If I tell it to the Heads of Europol National
Units they share my concerns but they tell me, "I do not
have the resources back home. I cannot task an IT department to
do something so I cannot do something to insert data". If
I talk to the police chiefs, where I am only one of the observers
in the group as I am not part of the Police Chief Task Force,
their advice is, "We are the Police Chief Task Force. Go
to the other people and try to convince them to insert data in
the system". This Information System is a very good example
that we are still in progress but we have to speed up. The system
was established some years ago. It was decided on 14 December
2004 to go for a specific system after a long debate where there
were two solutions, one more sophisticated and one less sophisticated.
The decision was to go for the less sophisticated system. That
decision was taken on 14 December 2004 and the task for Europol
was to establish the system by 10 October 2005. We were ready
and I informed the British Presidency by phone on 7 October, "The
system is ready and it works", and still until now the insertion
of data and the contribution of data is not as it could be and
as it should be. For example, only a minority of Member States
have developed data loaders and in these cases, of course, we
have a lot of data in the system, but the majority of the Member
States did not develop data loaders and from these Member States,
of course, we do not have as many data in the system as we should
have. That goes back to your question, "Who is then in charge?".
The Head of a Europol National Unit should be entitled at least
to start the process to put pressure on an IT department, if it
is outside his area of competence, to develop an automated data
loader. The argument which was raised recently, "We did not
know the technical details", I would contest. The first data
loader was developed by the end of 2005, so in parallel to the
system, and it worked from the beginning. That shows that the
Heads of the Europol National Units are placed to a certain extent
at the right level but it is a question of whether they have the
right power to really enforce and enhance things back home.
27 The Director's reply to this question is the subject
of a Supplementary Memorandum from Europol printed at page 114. Back
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