Examination of Witnesses (Questions 269
- 279)
WEDNESDAY 25 JUNE 2008
Mr Agustin Diaz de Mera Garcia Consuegra
Q269 Chairman: Thank
you very much for coming to talk to us. As you will know, this
is a Sub-Committee of the European Union Select Committee of the
House of Lords in London. We are tasked with overseeing issues
in the European Union which concern what we call the Home Office.
May I say to you how welcome you are. We were in The Hague yesterday
and we are here today and we return to London tonight. You will
realise that you are on the record. Could you tell us what the
European Parliament's strategy was during the negotiation of the
Council Decision on Europol? We would be interested to know how
you saw it from that chamber.
Mr Diaz de Mera (through an interpreter):
As you will know, the European Parliament has only been consulted.
It is part of a consultation process which is different from a
co-decision process whereby there will have to be negotiations
with the Council. Here the Parliament has only been consulted.
There is no co-decision process.
Q270 Chairman:
Starting from there, can you tell us whether the European Parliament
is satisfied with the new legislative framework which governs
Europol, which has now been agreed by the Council?
Mr Diaz de Mera: We believe that Europol
should be an agency rather than being ruled by a Convention. We
think that the Convention is obsolete. Crime has been advancing,
so to speak, and with the Convention in the last three or four
or seven years we have needed three or four or seven years to
ratify different amendments to this Convention. Article 34 is
the legal base for the proposal for decision which would mean
that there would no longer be the need for ratification by the
Member States but rather a decision by the Council which would
be the best way to cater for the new challenges and the new problems
faced by the new criminality. That is as far as the form is concerned.
As far as the content is concerned, we are not happy because the
Council has not accepted all the amendments proposed by the European
Parliament. We proposed 82 amendments and only 18 have been accepted.
I will explain some of them later. We are not happy because the
Council has not taken into account the control capacity of the
European Parliament any more than the control of the budget. We
are not satisfied because, contrary to the Commission proposal,
we have not been given the co-ordination organisation and execution
capabilities of the joint investigation teams that we suggested,
and we are not satisfied because previously Europol had the power
to build joint investigation teams and work with them to fight
against the counterfeiting of euros. There was the possibility
of a Europol agent leading these joint investigation teams and
this possibility has now been eliminated. We are also not happy
because the European Parliament wanted to be able to participate
in the nomination and the dismissal of the Europol Director and
this suggestion has not been accepted. Finally, to sum up, we
are not happy because none of our proposals for data protection
has been accepted either.
Q271 Chairman:
Thank you. That is a litany of dissatisfaction.
Mr Diaz de Mera: Obviously, but we think
this is the starting point. It is obviously not the end. We think
that with an agency we can reach these goals that cannot be reached
now as fast and as well as we think we can through this agency.
Q272 Lord Dear:
I would like to thank Sr Diaz de Mera. I mean no discourtesy by
leaving but I have to return to London. I wish him well.
Mr Diaz de Mera: Have a nice trip.
Q273 Chairman:
Do you think the development of Europol over the last few years
has been made more difficult because of the inability of the Member
States to reach a degree of unanimity without which those sensible
developments could not possibly take place?
Mr Diaz de Mera: Please allow me to give
you my personal opinion through my personal experience. The main
problem in Europol is the lack of trust. Europol was created in
1995, which is almost 13 years ago, and we have not been able
to reach the kind of trust level that we wanted. It is a problem
of trust but it is also a problem of specialisation because Europol
has been fighting against crime but especially through pre-emptive
actions, that is, there has been a problem of not being able to
share enough information and intelligence between Member States.
Whenever information has been shared it has been basically shared
with peers, with other specialists, so this information exchange,
as I see it through my personal experience, is bilateral. There
is a bilateral trust rather than an information exchange through
Europol itself. Of course, we are getting better. We now have
better practices and good examples, more specialisation. It is
not a problem of the Member States but rather of their special
services not being able to trust each other as much as they should.
The key is trust.
Chairman: Thank you very much. We have heard
that before.
Q274 Baroness Garden of Frognal:
In your November 2007 report on the Council Decision on Europol
you had certain concerns with data protection and democratic control
over Europol. Have any of these been taken into account by the
Council in the text that was agreed?
Mr Diaz de Mera: Unfortunately not. We
had many hopes of the European Parliament having more power in
the field of freedom, security and justice but, as you know, there
has been a guest that we had not invited, so to speak, which is
the referendum in Ireland which has broken a little bit all these
hopes of the European Parliament being able to intervene more
in the field of freedom, security and justice, but I have to say
the figure of the Data Protection Ombudsman has been kept.
Q275 Baroness Garden of Frognal:
With regard to data protection, if the Treaty of Lisbon enters
into force will Europol be bound by the provisions of Regulation
(EC) 45/2001 protecting individuals with regard to data processing
by Community institutions and bodies?
Mr Diaz de Mera: That is a very good
question indeed. If the Council adopt the agreement in April Europol
will be bound by its rules and if the Lisbon Treaty is approved
it will be bound by Regulation 45/2001 which is part of the First
Pillar.
Q276 Lord Mawson:
The budget is the main means of control which the European Parliament
can exercise over Europol. What scope is there for the European
Parliament to shape governance of Europol by putting forward inter-related
requirements for discharging Europol's budget?
Mr Diaz de Mera: The first thing I would
like to say is that, as things are today, the only control tool
that the European Parliament has is the budget, but I would like
to explain the problems of controlling Europol that the European
Parliament has, trying to analyse here the Europol budget so that
you can see the limited competences, the limited power that Europol
actually has over the budget. Let me try to explain the last Europol
budget. The total budget was €64 million, €44 million
for staff, €3.2 million for administration costs, €2.4
million for buildings, subsidies, documents, vehicles, €970,000
for salary adjustments, €2.5 million for the Management Board,
but for the operation unit for chiefs of police €100,000,
and for the information system €10.6 million, which are the
parts of the budget that we can actually control, so we only have
competences on the operation unit, €100,000, and the information
system, €10.6 million. I have explained all this so that
you can see that our power, our control, is quite limited.
Q277 Chairman:
If it was not limited and you had a much wider responsibility
with regard to the budget compared with now, what in your experience
would be the changes you would like to see in the administration
and the general activity of Europol whereby you could influence
their policy in directions you wished by using the weapon of the
budget? As we know, the power to control the budget is one of
the great powers that all parliaments have and we can remember
the previous report this Committee did on Frontex where the European
Parliament exerted influence on that through the budget. What
I would like you to do is just to tell us the things that dissatisfy
you now which you would like to put right by using the power of
the budget if that power was extended to allow you to do those
things.
Mr Diaz de Mera: Thank you for that very
interesting question. Let me just remind you that this is only
my personal opinion, but I would like to know more about how much
is spent on operational capacity, on mission capacities, things
like the fight against international terrorism, the counterfeiting
of euros, cyber crime, paedophilia, organised crime, common crimes
across borders, and also, of course, how much is spent on the
information system which is so vital for Europol.
Q278 Chairman:
How many of those things do you think are a consequence of bad
management of Europol itself or bad guidance from the Management
Board?
Mr Diaz de Mera: I cannot say that there
has been bad management, rather that the legal framework is a
bit obsolete for the year 2008 and for the following years, so
we do need a new legal framework, we do need an agency so that
we have more flexibility. Basically, we need new tools for Europol
to face the new challenges of the global world.
Q279 Chairman:
Do you think that there is confusion and do you think that there
is a big disadvantage to Europol at the moment because the Commission
does not seem to know exactly where it stands in exercising influence
over Europol?
Mr Diaz de Mera: What kind of influence
do you mean? It is important to clarify what kind of influence.
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