Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260
- 268)
WEDNESDAY 25 JUNE 2008
Mr Fabio Marini, Mrs Isabelle Pérignon, Mr
Dick Heimans and Mrs Victoria Amici
Q260 Chairman:
Why?
Mr Marini: Because in principle, for
example, in the Council in the discussion—
Q261 Chairman:
If you do not mind my interrupting, I was President at one time
of the Agriculture Council for the British Presidency. If a delegate
had come along and said, "I do not want this because it is
premature", he would have been laughed out of the meeting
just on the basis of saying, "It is premature". He would
have to explain why he thought it was premature. Why are they
saying this?
Mr Marini: They simply consider that
within the list of their priorities this was not at the top. They
had other priorities first, that was the outcome of the inspections
organised by the Council, so this is not among the first priorities
for the Member States so far, even if they did not deny the importance
of this. This is for the moment what is happening with the other
Member States.
Q262 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
In the interests of time I think we have got as far as we can
on that one; thank you. In the Work Programme for 2009 Europol
has an objective for establishing the Overall Analysis System
for Intelligence and Support (OASIS) as a best practice standard
for Member States. Does the Commission have a role in identifying
best practice standards in activities conducted by its own agencies
or soon-to-be agencies? Can I ask as a supplementary, have you
a means of validating these best practice standards?
Mrs Pérignon: In general terms
the Commission is always paying attention to best practices and
trying to disseminate them as widely as possible. As I explained
earlier on, for example, in all the meetings of groups of experts
in which the Commission participates, for instance, in the meetings
of the EU/JHA heads of agencies, best practices are exchanged
and we always try to promote them but we do not have any means
of validating them. We can invite the agencies or the soon-to-be
agencies to develop and adopt these best practices but we cannot
force them upon them.
Q263 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
You do not have any external validation of best practice?
Mrs Pérignon: No.
Q264 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
Do you feel this is something that is lacking?
Mr Heimans: Identification of best practice—this
serves of course to help the authorities in the Member States.
The fact that we consider it to be best practice is something
that we can put in a communication, for example. In my own line
of work we are working on radicalisation, for example. You identify
what different Member States are doing in that field and you communicate
that to the other Member States but it is not as if the Commission
is going to rubber-stamp a particular practice and say, "This
is the best and all Member States should follow it". I do
not think the Member States would be too keen to see such a position
from us.
Q265 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
So it is advisory?
Mr Heimans: Yes.
Lord Dear: I wanted to pursue this point because
it flows directly out of the question that I put at the very beginning
of this session, which was all about how one delegates powers.
I spent a lot of my working life in very large organisations and,
as you understand and as I understand and all of us know, life
is about an exercise in delegating power downwards. We have Member
States. They need to have an organisation like Europol. You sit
between the Member States or manage the Member States and you
delegate the responsibility for Europol and other similar agencies
down to that, but you do not just cast them adrift. You have to
have some means of making sure they do what you wish them to do
and knowing whether or not they are performing the right task
and the right task properly. I am putting it in very simple terms
because there might be a risk of a misunderstanding within this
room. My question originally and Lord Young's question go to the
whole root of this, that we are very interested in knowing whether
the Member States, individually or as a collective through the
Commission, have any real interest in what Europol does and any
real interest in co-ordinating it so that Europol goes in and
deals with things knowing it has the support, if not of every
Member State, certainly of the majority. The picture I am getting,
and please tell me if I am wrong, is that the Member States are
really all over the place, that Europol is making up its own rules
almost as it goes along,—and I am deliberately over-simplifying
this but I am trying very hard because of the language difficulties
to put this into a clear context—that Europol is operating
to its best endeavours; let me put it in those terms, that Member
States have not got a clear view of what they want Europol to
do, and that the linkage between the two is at best fragmented
and at worst hardly exists. I have deliberately over-emphasised
that to try and get to the point which we have all been looking
at for the last half hour or so, and I think all of my colleagues,
from the nodding that is going on in the room, would really like
an answer to those linkages between Member States and Europol.
Are the targets clear? Is everyone satisfied and, if they are
not, why not?
Q266 Lord Mawson:
Can I add a dimension to that, because my experience of best practice
in the UK that is emerging is that you can create whatever structure
you want and you can co-locate organisations, and having built
quite a number of projects that have co-located quite a number
of organisations I know from experience that you can put them
all in the same building, like this, actually, but they could
still be a thousand miles away from each other; they will not
communicate unless something else happens that is to do with people
and relationships. It seems to me the most effective organisations
I have experienced, certainly in the UK in the public sector and
the business sector, are all about where the relationships are
properly in place and are actually happening and are dynamic.
My worry about a lot of this conversation—and Lord Dear
is quite right in what he is saying—is that it all seems
very fragmented and the relationships do not seem to be in place
in a way that would make a dynamic organisation actually work,
dealing with some very difficult issues that I suspect are appearing
every day. That is a concern to me because these people are going
to have to operate in the modern world and I would be very interested
at the end of this to get a feel from Victoria what this is really
like, an honest feel at the front line, because you are the interface
there and it would be interesting to know honestly what it is
like.
Mr Heimans: I worked at Europol from
1995 to 2004 before joining the Commission, and since then I have
worked on the issue as well from the Commission side. I think
the picture that you are painting is excessively bleak, if I can
put it that way. Quite clearly you are going to have difficulties
in managing an organisation if the main power within that organisation
is with a Management Board which consists of 27 different Member
States which all have their individual interests. They all have
their individual systems of criminal law that they have to apply
as well, they all have their individual relations between prosecutors
and law enforcement personnel, and they all have their different
relationships between law enforcement agencies and intelligence
agencies which also need to work together in order to get that
information to the right level. I do not think it is right to
say that the Commission is the path through which power is delegated
by the Council to Europol. I think that is a misrepresentation
of the way the organisation is set up. The main power for managing
the organisation rests with the Member States. We can try to co-ordinate,
we can try to improve, we can try to influence, but the power
rests with the Council and it is the Council which decides through
the Management Board, through the heads of national units, through
all the different ways in which the Member States are represented
within the organisation what is the best course of action, and
I think they are doing a fairly good job of it, to be honest.
Mrs Amici: As you have noticed, first
of all, in terms of practical experience our colleague Dick Heimans
actually has been on both sides of the board since he worked at
Europol and then worked as a Commission official on the proposal
for a Council Decision. My experience is much more limited, more
recent and, dare I say, much more bureaucratic.
Q267 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
Refreshing candour!
Mrs Amici: However, your question prompts
a few comments from my side. In particular I note with interest
the comment you made about fragmentation of relations and how
organisations can be set up to work best in order to deliver their
mission. On the aspect of fragmentation, on the one hand I do
not know if you are making comparisons with other bodies that
are at a European level which are multinational but I think one
of the components that we have to take into consideration and
that can represent, let us say, an obstacle to unity of purpose
is the fact that around the table at the Management Board we have
27 Member States. That is the first point. Secondly, I think you
alluded to roles and responsibilities. We have two main organs
in Europol, which are the Management Board and the Director. I
think from hearsay that there have been feelings that in the past
relations have not been perhaps been at their best and I believe
that some of the other interviewees who have made submissions
referred also to the matter sometimes of clashes of personalities.
I think there is that element in that, but one of the objectives
of the new make-up, what the Commission has proposed in its original
proposal to bring Europol into the fold of the EU agencies, is
precisely to give it a structure which is similar to that of other
agencies, certainly not perfect, surely perfectible, but where
at least the respective roles of Management Board and Director
are more clearly defined, and the driving force behind this division
of responsibility is perhaps that the Management Board should
be responsible for the strategic direction of the organisation,
for setting objectives and monitoring their implementation, for
monitoring progress and keeping an eye on the operation of the
Director, whilst the Director should be concerned with the day-to-day
management and with delivering the objectives that are set to
him, notably in terms of staffing issues and, of course, the implementation
of the budget.
Q268 Chairman:
Thank you. I am afraid the clock has beaten us. We have interlocutors
coming to have lunch with us and I think out of courtesy we really
ought to break this now. We have two more questions which I think
you have had notice of. Is that correct?
Mr Marini: Yes.
Chairman: We would very much like your answers
on paper. They are important questions, but if you would be kind
enough to let us have those answers and if we want to follow up
we can perhaps do this by email in the future.
Lord Marlesford: I am not asking for an answer,
I follow your guidance on timing, Chairman, but could I, as it
were, supplement your two questions with a point which I think
they will take into account?
Chairman: Will you please do that?
Lord Marlesford: One of the main growing functions
of Europol is clearly dealing with terrorism. Europol is very
much a police-linked organisation. Much of the work against terrorism
is not done by the police (although a lot is done by the police)
but by the security services, for example, in the British case,
the Security Service, which we call MI5, which originally was
fighting the Soviet threat and then moved to drugs and is now
very largely directed to and dealing with terrorism.
Chairman: That is very helpful. We seem to have
covered a lot of ground in a short time and it has been helpful
of you to put in your views about these matters to our inquiry.
We shall, of course, send you a copy of our report when we publish
it. We are hoping to finish our evidence sessions before the end
of July and to publish a report before the end of the year, so
we will transmit it to you at that time. Thank you for coming.
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