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EU: The new Europol: no more European FBI, not yet European NSA..

07 December 2015

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"On November 30th the European Parliament Civil Liberties Committee has “informally” endorsed (with 43 to 5 with 4 abstentions) the text that the Council will soon adopt as “its” position on the post-Lisbon European Union Agency for Law enforcement Cooperation and Training (Europol).

Following the “informal” interinstitutional practice of the so called “legislative trilogues” (and notably of the so-called “early second reading” agreements) the Chair of the LIBE Committee has already addressed a letter to the President of the Permanent Representatives Committee announcing that when the Council will formally send the text to the plenary LIBE will recommend the Council’s text be approved without amendments in Parliament’s second reading so that the legislative procedure will be finalized and the text “informally” agreed (after some linguistic corrections) could be published in the coming months in the Official Journal.

I have already expressed my personal strong reservations on the legitimacy of such “informal” practices notably because they are done in secret when treaty require the transparency of legislative debates (and negotiations) also for the Council. In the Europol case the latest public texts were: the first “reading” of the EP adopted on 25 of February 2014 (at the end of the previous legislature) and the “general approach” of the Council on 5 of June 2014. Ten secret “trilogues” have been held in the following 16 months until suddenly at the end of November 2015 a draft compromise has finally emerged and has been submitted to the vote of of the Coreper and of the Parliamentary committee paving the way to the “formal” legislative procedure."

See: The new Europol: no more European FBI, not yet European NSA.. (EASFJ Freegroup, link)

See also: European Parliament: Abolish 1st [and 2nd] reading secret deals - bring back democracy “warts and all” (pdf)

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