Strengthening Europol's mandate

Briefing 06-07-2022

On 9 December 2020, along with its counter-terrorism agenda, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a regulation to reinforce the mandate of Europol, the EU law enforcement cooperation agency. The proposed regulation aims principally at rendering Europol's cooperation with private parties more effective; responding to the agency's 'big data challenge', by providing a legal basis for processing large and complex datasets, including personal data of data subjects not related to a crime; and reinforcing Europol's role in relation to research and innovation for law enforcement. The legislative proposal, which would amend the existing Europol Regulation (EU) 2016/794, is accompanied by another legislative proposal to modify Regulation (EU) 2018/1862 on the Schengen information system (SIS), to allow Europol to issue alerts in SIS under a new category. On 1 February 2022, the European Parliament and the Council reached a provisional agreement on the proposal for a regulation, which was formally adopted by each institution on 4 May and 24 May respectively, and signed into law on 8 June. The regulation entered into force on 28 June 2022. Third edition. The 'EU Legislation in Progress' briefings are updated at key stages throughout the legislative procedure.