Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 198)
TUESDAY 24 JUNE 2008
Mr Max-Peter Ratzel
Q180 Baroness Garden of Frognal:
You mentioned in one or two previous answers the matter of language
or differences of interpretation and I wondered what the impact
was on operational effectiveness, the fact that different Member
States may interpret terminology in different ways.
Mr Ratzel: "Operational effectiveness"—then
you have two words which can be interpreted quite differently.
It makes it even more difficult. I try to understand words in
the first instance literally. If I look at the word "effectiveness"
I look at how strong the outcome is. I do not first look at the
money I have to pay for that. Then I would speak about efficiency.
If I looked at the operational effectiveness I would look at in
how many cases did we, for example, support Member States in arresting
people, in leading them to track seizures, in bringing them into
a position to prosecute people, et cetera. That would be for me
one element by which to assess operational effectiveness. To look
into that we have a lot of good case examples and I would like
to provide you with one as it comes from your country, but nevertheless
I will tell it in an anonymous way. The specific situation was
that the police organisation got information that a person might
be financing terrorism. All the investigations which could take
place back home did not lead to convincing results, to real evidence,
so they could not prosecute the person, but they found out that
there were a lot of suspicious elements around the person. That
regional police force contacted the Europol National Unit and
their national desk here. They came to Europol. We had one of
these analytical meetings. They opened their file and we provided
them with some expertise and we offered them, "If you present
your data to us and we put it into an Analysis Work File, although
we cannot guarantee a result we can guarantee there will be some
outcome that will be helpful for you". At the end, by comparing
these data which had been inserted into the Analysis Work File
up to three years ago we were able to link that specific case
to two other ongoing cases in a second Member State and to a fourth
ongoing case in a third Member State. These cases could not have
been linked together without the bridge of Europol. As a consequence
we invited the two other Member States in addition. We brought
all of them together here, we set up a team with analysts, linguists,
experts in terrorism and in that case experts in financing, and
at the end the person was able to be prosecuted and sentenced
to more than ten years in prison. This is a clear operational
effective measure. Only by amalgamating the data and linking them
to each other by finding out the cross-checks could these investigations
be successful and this is from my viewpoint a very clear example
that we can be very operational without having any coercive powers.
Q181 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
Director, Article 9(3)(d) of the Council Decision establishing
Europol allows bilateral exchanges to cover crimes outside the
competence of Europol. What will be the impact of this change
in your opinion?
Mr Ratzel: As the Council Decision is
not yet established I can only assume what will be the impact.
Our expectation is that this will provide Member States with an
additional opportunity to use the Europol building and the Europol
environment for something else which is not part of Europol's
internal work but will introduce the use of Europol in the community.
If we limit it, as it is the case now, to a very narrow focus,
was which done in the start-up phase of the organisation on purpose
and to a certain extent justifiably from my viewpoint, we cannot
survive in the long run as Member States also expect Europol,
at least via the liaison officers, to give them more support.
What we have seen in the past is that whenever we told the Member
States, "We cannot support here, we cannot support there",
many people have been disappointed by that, but by offering them
at least the opportunity to use the channel via the liaison officers
at Europol we can raise the interest in Europol and we can also
guide them, "In that particular case you can only go via
the liaison officers but if you have a case which is within our
mandate then you should also involve Europol as an organisation".
This is also another issue which is of interest to us. For the
time being 75-80% of the information flow is mainly between the
Member States and the Member States and third partners, and only
20-25% involves Europol. From our viewpoint there should be the
involvement of Europol in the system more often in order to give
feedback to the Member States but also in order to give us more
data in order to find out more cross-matches in the database,
which is based on the contributions from the Member States. You
will see in our work plan, in our benchmarking, that this is one
of the points where we would like an increase in the participation
of Europol in the information transfer from Member State to Member
State and from Member States to third partners.
Q182 Lord Dear:
Director, you are being very helpful; I am grateful to you. Can
I move you on to organised crime? The Organised Crime Threat Assessment
of last year picked up a point which was really to do with putting
Europol into a position of knowing what had happened to actions
that had been taken and it was recommending specifically that
actions should wherever possible concentrate on the upper end
of organised crime and that the results of operations amongst
organised crime outside in the Member States and the difficulties
they experience should be fed back to you so that you understood
what was happening to the product of your work. I wonder if you
can tell us how many notifications like that, of that outcome,
so to speak, you have received.
Mr Ratzel: We have made quite interesting
progress in the last year and I would like to describe it from
two sides to make clear where we have more problems and where
we have fewer problems. We have had fewer problems in the last
years in the area of terrorism. In terrorism people realised after
9/11, especially after the Madrid bombings but especially after
the first and second London bombings, that we had to do a lot
to prevent crime and that meant we had to exchange information
much more spontaneously instead of waiting too long. But that
was guided by the principle of preventing attacks or stopping
ongoing planning. That was a good experience so we got more and
more information, the information was more relevant and the information
was more fresh. It is a little bit similar in the field of organised
crime. In organised crime many investigators are still guided
by the principle of camouflaging the investigation, trying not
to jeopardise the investigation and so not all of them have built
up a multilateral basis of trust. They do not have confidence
in all the other people who could share the information. It is
not necessarily the organisation; it is the possible access by
others to the database. They had to learn, and they have learned
meanwhile, that this information can be very well protected in
Europol Analysis Work Files. We have drafted the first documents
for the Organised Crime Threat Assessment. We have clearly indicated
that instead of a collection plan we will go across Member States
once a year to collect data on a certain date for a certain purpose
but nevertheless we invited Member States to provide us with data
spontaneously, so in the early stages of investigations after
certain steps have been achieved, after people have been arrested.
This has been learned quite well also in the field of organised
crime. People have felt that organised crime networks especially
cannot be dismantled and disrupted if you are not co-operating
internationally. Just yesterday we were able to tackle another
group in illegal immigration with a lot of arrests and a lot of
seizures, which was based on a very recent, ongoing exchange of
information. People are now reporting to us much earlier than
they did in the past and we try to find out if this information
can only be taken for an Analysis Work File, so for a very limited
purpose, or as soon as possible if the data can be transferred
from the Analysis Work File to the information system which has
then a wider use so everybody can retrieve the data from the information
system in the Member States, or if we can take the data also for
the Organised Crime Threat Assessment for the next year. In the
first instance people were very careful not to transfer too many
data from Analysis Work Files to the information system and that
readiness has now been developed, and especially by the codes
in the Analysis Work Files people could see that we do not jeopardise
investigations. Instead, we clearly support the straight guidance,
let us say, of the Member States to safeguard their sources.
Q183 Lord Dear:
One of the thrusts of my question was whether you are put in a
position of knowing what has happened once the work file has been
completed, the product is given to a Member State and they carry
out an operation, and whether the work that you were doing was
useful or not and whether it was used or not. It is feedback really.
Feedback is important; otherwise you are working completely in
the dark or in a vacuum, and I wondered whether you were getting
that feedback when the operation was completed.
Mr Ratzel: We get the feedback in various
ways. We get it back directly as many of the people give feedback
in writing, in meetings. We get very good feedback via the liaison
officers and when we make internal assessments on the Analysis
Work Files, for example, there is a special column to ask for
and evaluate the feedback from the Member States, how is the feedback
with the liaison officers and how is the co-operation with the
liaison officers on that particular issue. And we even have another
column on how is the participation and the involvement of Eurojust.
It is not enough to have good co-operation with the police. Good
co-operation with justice is also needed. In addition, we get
a second level of feedback by letters of appreciation which are
sent to us. Quite regularly I get letters of appreciation from
ministers, chiefs of police, local chiefs of police, expressing
in that particular case, "Europol supported us with this
issue and that issue and we really would like to express our gratitude".
I get letters of appreciation from judges, from prosecutors, and
I really appreciate that as it gives us the feedback which we
need. We get feedback by having common press conferences. I was
invited to go to Paris today to a press conference. Of course
I could not go, but it entitled one of my staff members to be
present to represent Europol in the press conference. We are invited
to make common press releases where Europol and Eurojust, for
example, are mentioned, and the last level is that we get feedback
at the end of the year and we have clear indicators that the level
of satisfaction is increasing from year to year and this is also
expressing that the products are very well appreciated and meet
the expectations of the Member States.
Q184 Lord Dear:
You are obviously well satisfied with the way things are going
at the moment.
Mr Ratzel: I would say I am not perfectly
satisfied but we are on the right track. It is a long way to get
the highest level of satisfaction but we are on the right track.
Q185 Lord Dear:
Could I move you on but stay with the Organised Crime Threat Assessment,
which again last year made a recommendation that there should
be a new intelligence-led control strategy to cover the entire
national territory? I wonder if you have any vision at all of
whether those control strategies are being put into place by a
Member State. I know it is early days yet but your view on what
the progress has been would be helpful to us.
Mr Ratzel: That is quite a challenging
issue. I am not aware whether all Member States have national
crime control strategies. I have asked at various times. I never
saw them in the whole bunch of documents.
Q186 Lord Dear:
You do not think there are any of them?
Mr Ratzel: No; I know definitely that
there are in some Member States quite robust ones. But there are,
let us say, also some question marks on my side on control strategies.
Even the word "control strategy" is contested. It indicates
that you can control something where other people say you cannot
control it at all, and we had an interesting debate in the Management
Board some time ago where we had a debate on the strategy. The
outcome was that the strategy was established and endorsed and
the logical point would have been to endorse some priorities.
That was a long debate, what should be the priorities, and then
at the end one delegate on the Management Board said, "All
of us know that the priorities are set by the criminals so it
is not up to us to set priorities". I was wondering if the
Management Board could follow that proposal and afterwards I contacted
some of them bilaterally and told them, "To be honest, I
am a little disappointed. I would have expected that we at least
try to set priorities. Even if we fail in the first year and the
second year, in the third or fourth year let us come to the point",
but this is a cultural issue. "Crime control", "counteracting
crime", "war on criminals", "war on drugs",
different words mean different approaches and the culture in crime
fighting is quite different all over the Continent, between Ireland
and Cyprus, between Portugal and Finland and everything in between.
"Crime control strategies" are far from being unified,
but we are on the right track again. With the OCTA we have now
an instrument in hand and therefore I was really grateful when
I saw that the Council had defined the OCTA to be Europol owned.
It is a very decisive element as the Member States in the end
do not decide what is in the OCTA. At the end it is the organisation.
Even that was heavily contested the first time we published the
OCTA. One Member States wanted to step in at the very last moment.
That showed that they did not really support strongly that an
independent institution was drafting the Organised Crime Threat
Assessment. Even there we have improved in the last few years
but there are still more steps to be achieved in the next few
years.
Q187 Chairman:
If I could just interrupt, I think it would be helpful if you
could give us some broad indication as to the extent this has
been taken up by Member States. Lord Dear got the impression and
so did I that there were not any Member States who had taken it
up and you said, "Oh, no, some have". Could you give
us in broad terms—is it less than five, less then ten?
Mr Ratzel: I would say it is at least
ten Member States that have control strategies. What I can see
now is that those who perhaps do not have an overall strategy
develop sub-strategies, for example, for fighting drugs, for fighting
illegal immigration, for fighting counterfeiting of currency,
and at the end you can always have a top-down or bottom-up approach.
It does not matter that much from my viewpoint as long as you
start at least to have control strategies.
Q188 Lord Dear:
You said around ten, so roughly half of the Member States have
a policy and half have not?
Mr Ratzel: Yes, half of the Member States
may have a "control strategy".
Q189 Lord Dear:
Could I move quickly on to terrorism? As we all know, Europol
spends more than €2 million on being the support centre in
counter-terrorism, supporting the Member States' preparedness
and their ability to carry out investigations. I wondered whether
you had an overall view of how well that is going, in other words
how well is Europol being able to support the pan-European thrust
against international terrorism.
Mr Ratzel: I am really confident in saying
that the area of counter-terrorism has developed best in the last
years.
Q190 Lord Dear:
Better than against organised crime?
Mr Ratzel: Yes, better than organised
crime, as obviously there was a higher pressure and there was
a higher readiness of Member States and the relevant persons in
the Member States to open their boxes and share information. We
have made a lot of progress and what I would like to introduce—and
it is quite complicated to understand—is the whole concept
of Europol in the European Union. One can be very focused on the
advantage which you have back home with Europol but you can also
look in a much wider perspective and the terrorism area is one
of the areas. If people look at the threat by terrorism they may
be misled that small Member States or new Member States would
or could not be affected by terrorism at all. I would say it is
a very risky enterprise to make that assessment. We saw it just
recently and I would like to give you that example. After the
cartoon cases in Denmark you could see immediately all Danish
institutions throughout the world were endangered, but then something
happened which was not really understood in the first instance,
that the Austrian Embassy in Lebanon was attacked. The first assessment
was that the terrorists mixed up the different flags, as by coincidence
both countries have red and white in their flags. But that was
not the point. The Austrian Embassy was attacked on purpose as
Austria held the EU Presidency at that time. So I advised now
the Slovenians, after the recent threats, "Please be aware
that Slovenia is now representing the European Union. Even if
you are a small country you may be attacked", and they were
very satisfied with that and Slovenia raised its readiness. But
also, when I have been to the Baltic States, they told me, "We
are not really in the focus". I said, "Maybe, but are
you aware how many people you have in your country who may offer
shelter for others who may support financing, who may be involved
in radicalising?". "Oh, we never thought about that".
By raising their awareness you profit in the end also in the UK
but it is complicated to measure this. That was a clear increase.
For example, after the first and second attacks in 2005 and 2007
in the UK we had extremely good co-operation from the Metropolitan
Police, supported and guided by SOCA and by the British desk,
and we had access to their data. We analysed the data and it was
much more important from my viewpoint that at the end of the investigations,
by the autumn of that year, the team of the Metropolitan Police,
higher level, medium level and working level, offered to make
best practice exchanges and we used our main conference hall.
We invited only vetted people. The same exercise was done in the
afternoon in Eurojust and the people from the Metropolitan Police
opened their experience box and told the others what had been
challenged by them prior to the event, during the event and after
the event. This had a very strong influence on all these experts
from the Member States and they took a lot of profit from that,
and we have since done this exercise after all the relevant events.
By that we increased the capacity of those Member States who had
not got the experience and they were much more alerted. Step by
step we also get relevant information and we can counter-check
the information against the information from your country, for
example, so in the terrorism case we recently increased the co-operation.
Q191 Lord Dear:
And you would be the only organisation that does that debriefing,
as we would call it?
Mr Ratzel: I am not sure we are the only
one but this is a very good way to do it, debriefing and trusting
other people to learn from that. We did it, as I said, at Europol
and at Eurojust so it is necessary to do it with police officers
and with judiciary people and also to understand how these things
are interlinked with each other. We also invited, for example,
people from the press offices in the police to learn how to handle
any crisis like this. The press and the media work is not that
easy. If you are not prepared at all you may have difficulties
afterwards. There is an increase in abilities all over Europe,
but of course a stronger Member State, a more advanced Member
State, is always more on the giving side than on the receiving
side. But this is well established and money well spent from my
viewpoint as you raise the level of awareness and expertise all
over the Continent.
Chairman: I just have a comment before I call
Lord Harrison. You mentioned smaller states and you mentioned
the Baltic States, but was it not Latvia which had a major cyber
attack which nearly crippled the whole country? They are very
vulnerable.
Q192 Lord Harrison:
Mr Ratzel, can we pass on to co-operation with EU agencies and
other partners? You have already mentioned Eurojust and Interpol
and it is also a question about the optimum frequency of meetings.
Could you tell us a little bit about the relationship with Interpol?
I understand, according to the 2009 Work Programme, that you are
going to meet on an annual basis at head of organisation, head
of department and working level. Is that sufficient or do you
need to meet more often, and in the case of Eurojust I think it
is envisaged that you meet every three months. Again, is that
the best frequency? Are you able to get work done or would you
like to stretch it or shorten it?
Mr Ratzel: First, if I may give you the
feedback, it was Estonia which was attacked but that was a specific
situation. It was attacked by its big brother east of it but it
demonstrates the vulnerability as the attack could have been done
by criminals or by terrorism-motivated people; you are completely
right, and they learned that lesson too at the time. Coming back
to your question, let me first look at the co-operation with Interpol.
It is a little bit confusing for some people as the word sounds
similar and people think Europol is a daughter enterprise of Interpol
or Interpol is our father. This is not the case. The institutions
are quite different from each other and I can say this as I have
worked for and with Interpol as well as for and with Europol for
a long time. I have worked my whole career internationally and
I see the advantages and the limitations of both systems at the
same time. When I started here one of my first steps was to pick
up the phone and call the Secretary-General at Interpol and liaise
with him to find out what could be done in order to find a suitable
solution so that you, as Member States of Europol and of Interpol,
should not pay twice for the same service. Our approach sounds
very simple, but in reality it is a little complicated. We are
following an approach to complement each other. Europol has the
advantage to have been created within the European Union with
a strong mandate on organised crime, or in future serious international
crime and terrorism, mainly focusing on the European Union and
on some specifically vetted third partners. Interpol has a network
of 186 (in future 187) Member States, mainly looking backwards
after a crime has happened, exchanging information on this particular
crime, not looking forward as much as we do, not doing this kind
of crime analysis and threat assessment but being a very good
platform for exchanging very fast information which can be easily
handled. But having 186 partners one can doubt how far you can
fully trust all of them. This is different in the European Union.
We have had an agreement to complement each other. Whenever something
is under the authority of Europol we are supported by Interpol
and vice versa. This is guaranteed by a lot of various mechanisms.
You mentioned that we have to meet at least once; we have to say
"at least". It means once per year we have at least
a formal meeting, so once a year I go to Interpol or Mr Noble
comes here, but in addition we meet on various occasions. We pick
up the phone, inform each other, we consult each other whenever
necessary, as do the heads of departments, so Mr Simancas goes
twice a year to meet his counterpart at Interpol. In addition,
the heads of unit meet whenever necessary, bilaterally, multilaterally,
in meetings, in congresses, in international events. Also, do
not forget we have established liaison officers from both organisations.
When I started here, Europol had a liaison officer in Lyon but
there was no liaison officer from Interpol at Europol. I convinced
Mr Noble also to put a liaison officer here. To make the picture
complete, we visit each other at international conferences, so
I go to the Interpol General Assembly once year, Mr Simancas goes
to the Interpol European Regional Conference, and we invite Mr
Noble if we have important conferences here at Europol and it
is up to him to come on his own or to send one of his delegates.
The last issue is that we send people to each other's organisations
for a two-week internship to learn in their own field of experience
what can be done by Europol, what can be done by Interpol, how
can we complement each other.
The situation with Eurojust is rather different
from the situation with Interpol as we have no overlapping with
Eurojust and even no risk of overlapping. Eurojust is co-ordinating
judicial work in Europe by national representatives to Eurojust
and we are supporting the Member States. Very often people do
not understand the very different concepts of Eurojust and Europol,
so when you compare the co-operation between police and judiciary
in the Member States it is different from the co-operation between
Europol and Eurojust. When, for example, I contact the UK desk
at Eurojust it is not Eurojust; it is the UK desk at Eurojust,
and for Mr Brian Donald, the head of the UK desk, to contact the
UK desk it is not a Europol/Eurojust contact; it is an internal
UK contact. That is not understood by everybody correctly. When
we go and meet Eurojust, we try to find out where we can bridge
the organisational link and where can we make that as close as
possible. That is done in periodical meetings. We have a specific
group of people dedicated to that work. It is under the guidance
of the Deputy Director Corporate Governance. They meet also at
least once a quarter, if necessary more often. In addition they
meet at the level of experts from the Legal Service, for example,
to find out what can be done to closely link to each other. Or
we meet people from the IT department to establish a secure technical
link between the two organisations and also describe the procedures
which are necessary to be established to guarantee this secure
link to be used. Independent from that, we have ongoing visits
of prosecutors of Eurojust at Europol who are involved in crime
analysis, who are involved in investigations, and of analysts
at Europol who are involved in investigations which are co-ordinated
with Eurojust prosecutors, so this is on the working level an
everyday experience. Therefore, we advocated strongly that Eurojust
and Europol should be co-located as closely as possible, if possible
under one roof with separate areas of competence. Now, we will
be posted in two separate buildings but at walking distance from
each other. We do everything to meet each other as often as possible,
and, of course, I also meet the President of Eurojust as often
as possible and when we go to international meetings we always
take the opportunity to have a bilateral meeting in the margins.
Yesterday, for example, I met the Vice-President of Eurojust in
Brussels and, of course, besides the official meeting we had two
or three issues to be discussed and debated and we did that in
the margins, so it is really very close and very open and trustful
co-operation.
Chairman: Now we move to the various more technical
issues of performance objectives and indicators. We will try and
make it reasonably brief because we would like to try and fit
in a visit to the liaison office before we move on to Eurojust
if we could. Perhaps Lord Young would like to put two questions
together.
Q193 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
To enhance trust and confidence of Europol's stakeholders and
partners the key performance indicator of the 2009 Work Programme
is to maintain at least an 80% level of organisational compliance
with the Europol Security Policy and Data Protection Principles
and Requirements. Why only 80%? That sounds to me quite a challenging
target. My second question is that there is a business performance
objective which is an overall improvement in customer satisfaction
as reported in the results of the annual Corporate Client Survey.
Are these results heading in the right direction? It sounds to
me from your previous contribution as though they are but I await
your comments.
Mr Ratzel: The first question is quite
interesting to be understood in the right way. What we want to
express is that we would like to deal with these issues in our
reports and we would appreciate it if 80% of the issues could
be part of the report with the result very positively achieved.
That does not mean that in the other 20% the result was negative
but it was not as positive as in the other 80%. We would like
to deal with all these issues in our yearly reports and our key
performance indicator is that we should have 80% of them in the
report mentioned in a positive way, that we have achieved the
goals set so far. In the past we have only had a very limited
number of security incidents. If I compare this very limited number
to the everyday workload and everyday business, as I said prior
to your question, I am really very satisfied that within the last
few years we have achieved a quite robust system and understanding
and implementation of security measures in general terms. The
second question was answered in principle, I think, in one of
my previous comments. The client survey gives you an indication
that the results achieved are improving from year to year in a
very constant way upwards. We are still on that way and I am very
confident that also in the future we will move in the same direction.
The feedback from the Member States is that we are on the right
track, but that we still have to improve. We are still quite a
young organisation, not even nine years old. By the way, we have
also had a certain difficulty in getting a streamlined management.
Until now we have had, if I am not mistaken, more than 10 directors
and deputy directors, which is of course quite complicated. We
have had, including myself, three directors and I guess 10 deputy
directors, so 13 people at the top level. On that level, only
one person, Mr Simancas, who was with us at lunch, had a prolongation
of his contract. That gives also a certain view of how complex
the issue is. We have had directors and deputy directors from
Germany, the UK, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain, Italy at
least, so seven or eight different nationalities, different personal
backgrounds, which also indicates that we are not on our way now
to streamlining the organisation.
Q194 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
If I could pursue something on the first question, it was interesting
the way you put the 80%/20% in context. That is against a background
of the variability of 27 Member States, shall we say, or the conditions
that apply in 27 Member States?
Mr Ratzel: You are perfectly right. As
I said, when we talk about Europol we must always be aware whether
we are talking about the organisation, the headquarters, or whether
we are talking about the organisation in the wider understanding.
Until now I have had no clear figure but I guess, and we have
made some estimations, that if we speak about Europol in the wider
understanding there may be two million people. To ensure that
two million people are following a very strict, very rigid, very
complex security regime is quite a challenge. Just recently we
became aware when we had a security incident that people mix up
things and that was exactly the case I mentioned. When we are
in a meeting and we transfer a document it is not even understood
that after the transfer of the document to all representatives,
sorry to say so, it is the UK responsibility; it is no longer
Europol's responsibility. When we go to Eurojust, for example,
we are not entitled to transfer a document to Eurojust but we
are entitled to transfer a document to a liaison officer of a
Member State. If this liaison officer then transfers the document
to his national prosecutor that is then an intra-national transfer
of information following the national law. This is quite complicated
and if somebody loses the document on the way back home it is
no longer our responsibility. It is quite complicated to make
everybody aware of the various steps and so far it is a real challenge.
I cannot ensure everything for 27 Member States and two million
people but we are really trying to do our utmost. What we also
try to do is take on board in the Security Committee those people
from the Member States, not only to guide us and give us the rules,
so to speak, but also to introduce the same rules to be applied
back home at the same time and in the same way. For example, people
have to report if a security incident occurs, but they think once
it occurs back home they should not inform me. Of course they
should inform me as it is a Europol document. Just recently I
saw in the newspapers that in two cases security incidents happened
in the UK when documents were lost, on the train in one case.
If this happened to a Europol document nobody would complain about
the UK authorities. Everybody would complain about Europol although
it was not under my control any more. This is the natural situation,
that if somebody has lost a document he should inform me, not
as a person but as a post-holder, and then I can take appropriate
steps.
Chairman: Director, it sounds a bit more than
two out of ten to me.
Q195 Lord Marlesford:
A quick question on the Strategic Threat Assessments. I am not
absolutely clear of the difference between them and the Organised
Crime Threat Assessments. You give them after nine months. Why
nine months? How many of these do you give each year and how many
countries can have them?
Mr Ratzel: This was a rule and a proposal
which was endorsed by the Management Board but also here I would
like to stress that this is the minimum, so we have to deliver
it in nine months at the latest. In reality the situation is quite
different. We provide the Member States with regular threat assessments,
not only Organised Crime Threat Assessments but also sectorial
threat assessments. We provide them on a regular basis with threat
assessments on illegal immigration, trafficking human beings,
child pornography, counterfeiting of euro currency, motorcycle
gangs. Until now it was exceptionally the case that the Member
States asked us to provide them with another threat assessment.
From our expertise and from our analysis background, we feel there
may come a need to provide a threat assessment. So we are rather
proactively providing Member States with threat assessments then
waiting for them to ask us to provide them. This is more a theoretical
exercise. In reality, there is never a waiting period of nine
months for one of these threat assessments.
Q196 Lord Harrison:
Mr Ratzel, we come to the wonderful acronym of OASIS now. According
to the 2009 Work Programme one of your objectives is to establish
the Overall Analysis System for Intelligence and Support (OASIS)
as a best practice standard for Member States. Can you explain
how you have validated this claim of best practice? Did you consult
and chat about it? How do you intend to establish it?
Mr Ratzel: For quite some time we have
been able to see that we need a lot of energy and a lot of resources
to insert data in the Analysis Work Files as the data have been
delivered to us very often in ways which were not very structured.
We needed to invest a lot of staff members and a lot of energy
to prepare the data for insertion. As our staff is limited we
try to find out how we could overcome the problem. In the end
the proposal was to develop OASIS as a toolbox in order to prepare
the data and make it easier to transfer them automatically into
the system. During the development of the system we also liaised
with a lot of experts in the Member States and we tried to find
out if in any of the Member States a similar system existed which
could be for us a kind of template or blueprint for co-operation.
My people informed me that a blueprint for that could not be found
as the problem was quite different in the Member States than it
was in Europol. Over time we have gained a lot of experience and
a lot of expertise in that field. We were able to identify that
no other system is available which would be more fit for practice,
and therefore we are quite confident that this is the best practice
experience and the best practice example. For the time being at
least no other system could have been identified by us. The second
point is how do we intend to establish it? The question is a little
bit outdated now as we have started to establish it since last
winter. The system has been accepted by the Management Board and
we have established it step-by-step so the system was put from
the development platform to the practical platform. By doing,
so we have transferred one Analysis Work File after another into
the system and we have carefully considered not to have any data
corruption, not to have any data loss, and a guarantee that the
full functionality of the Analysis Work File will also be available
after the transfer to OASIS. During that process we realised that
there was a need for some fine-tuning and the fine-tuning was
done in order to guarantee the smooth running not only in the
development environment but also in the real environment.
Q197 Lord Harrison:
It is good news to hear that it is up and running, but did you
meet any resistance because so often Member States can be reluctant
to be forced into a straitjacket, as they might see it, in terms
of the presentation of material?
Mr Ratzel: In that respect I did not
see resistance. It took a long time to achieve the results so
it was long hard work, and to some extent we also had to ask for
prolongation of deadlines as it was more complicated and more
sophisticated than expected. But once it was established there
was no reluctance at all by the Member States to introduce it
after the security clarification for the network was given, et
cetera.
Q198 Chairman:
Director, as we come towards the end, returning to the evidence
that you kindly sent us, you discussed in that evidence the Comprehensive
Operational Strategy Plan. We were somewhat puzzled to see that
there was no reference to that plan in the 2009 Work Programme.
Could you explain to us why that was and are you rather setting
aside that plan, and why, if that is the case?
Mr Ratzel: Certainly I can do so. The
COSPOL approach, as it is called, is an approach which has been
developed by the Police Chief Task Force. As I said, the Police
Chief Task Force is an independent body which is not directly
linked to Europol. As Director I have an observer and supporter
role at the Police Chief Task Force, but nevertheless we could
convince the Police Chief Task Force and our governing bodies
that everything which is done under the umbrella of the Police
Chief Task Force should be in line with Europol approaches and
should be supported by Europol tools. One of the reasons to develop
the COSPOL approach was to find a parallel, supportive development
from Europol to the Police Chief Task Force. Under the Dutch Presidency,
in the second semester of 2004, this COSPOL approach was developed
in order to define the operational work of the Police Chief Task
Force to be concentrated in various projects under the COSPOL
umbrella. For each of these projects there should be a supportive
element from Europol. So far, the COSPOL approach is not part
of the Europol environment but part of the Police Chief Task Force.
What we have assured is that for all COSPOL projects we will have
relevant Analysis Work Files to support the COSPOL approach under
the pre-condition that from these COSPOL participants we get data
delivered to the Analysis Work Files. Once again, I have to go
back to the Organised Crime Threat Assessment. After the first
Organised Crime Threat Assessment was drafted and endorsed, and
after the second one was endorsed, we also advised the Police
Chief Task Force via the Council to clearly identify if the COSPOL
projects were in line with the OCTA as otherwise we could not
support them any more as our Analysis Work Files should be in
line with the priorities of the OCTA. As a logical consequence
one or two of the COSPOL projects were closed as they were no
longer in line with these priorities or they had come to an end.
Each time a new COSPOL project is identified there must be either
a link to an existing Analysis Work File or to a priority OCTA.
As a logical consequence, Europol will establish an Analysis Work
File. Although it is not mentioned they are linked to each other
horizontally.
Chairman: Thank you. Director, you have been
extremely interesting and direct and clear and we are very grateful.
You have also been very generous with your time and you have been
most hospitable, which I think I said three times earlier because
you surprised us particularly with that. Thank you very much indeed.
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