European Commission: Home Affairs

More and more Europeans take advantage of their right to freely move around the EU for business or personal reasons. Unfortunately, terrorists and criminal organisations also benefit from and use this freedom. Consequently, several measures have been put in place to help national law enforcement agencies in the EU to cooperate more rapidly and efficiently. Thus, the EU is developing into a single area of freedom, security and justice, where individuals' rights are protected and organised crime efficiently countered.

Intelligence sharing

The main objectives of the EU are to grant national law enforcement authorities access to relevant information (such as DNA and fingerprint databases or the immigration database VIS), improve police cooperation within a common framework of personal data protection and develop a European Information Exchange Model.

Law enforcement

The Commission is not in charge of operational activities. It contributes to the enhancement of law enforcement cooperation by:

• Making proposals for EU legislation and assisting EU States in the implementation of existing legal instruments.

  The main existing legal instruments include:

  • Data Retention Directive
  • Swedish Initiative Framework Decision
  • Prüm Treaty and Prüm Decision
  • Decision on access for consultation of the Visa Information System (VIS)
  • Framework Decision on Joint Investigation Teams
  • Decision on cooperation between special intervention units.
• Participating in specialised EU bodies, such as COSI, Europol and CEPOL.
• Financing national and multi-national projects that enhance police cooperation (mainly from the Prevention of and Fight against Crime (ISEC) programme).
• Preparing and negotiating bilateral agreements with non-EU countries on exchanges of information for law enforcement purposes (e.g. agreements on transfers of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data).