Pierluigi Paganini
May 02, 2016
The Europol, the European Police Agency, gets new cyber powers to fight against terrorists online.
The European Parliament’s civil liberties committee has approved new governance rules by a massive majority.
The fight against radical organizations like the ISIS is a priority for the EU states, the European Police Agency needs more powers to tackle terrorist activities on the Internet.
The powers come with strong data protection safeguards, the new regulation gives more power to the Internet Referral Unit, which is in charge of destroying terrorist propaganda and extremist activities on the Internet.
In November, the EU members expressed a positive opinion about the draft rules that were planning to give new powers to the Europol in order to step up EU police cooperation and fight terrorism. In January 2016, the director of Europol Rob Wainwright announced the opening of a new European counter-terrorism centre to fight the terrorism.
The new governance rules obtained 40 votes to three, only two members abstained.
The EU requests to the Europol to promptly respond to emerging threats, in particular to terrorist threats.
The new powers aim to support the Europol in operational and strategic analysis.
The new governance rules give the EU’s judicial cooperation agency Eurojust the full access to data gathered by the European Police Agency.
The proposed rules just need the final approval of the whole European Parliament. Let’s wait for the next plenary session which is planned to be held in Strasburg in May.
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(Security Affairs – terrorism, European Police)
