Description
This paper considers the constitutional and normative justification for transforming Europol into a fully-fledged supranational agency. It begins with a discussion of the narrative of Europol, its emergence and the earlier developments of law and policy in this area, including the rationale for creating this agency. Based on this discussion, the paper subsequently discusses the constitutional restrictions for developing Europol’s operational powers. It discusses critically the scope, limits and nature of Europol’s powers as well as its operating structure in light of Article 88 TFEU and the new Europol Regulation. Finally, it penetrates the justifications for giving powers to a centralised European police force to directly investigate crimes and proposals to give Europol more and binding operational powers. The key argument advanced is that the economic rationale, moral and democratic premises for accepting Europol intervention in the area of criminal justice must, in order to ensure the legitimacy of EU criminal policy, be confined to protecting clearly defined transnational interests or transnational implications attached to a regulated activity or problem. For this reason it is proposed that complex transnational criminal activity circumscribes the scope for Europol’s intervention in the area of operational cooperation in criminal justice. This, however, makes a case for giving Europol binding powers to coordinate and manage national investigations with respect to serious cross-border crime.
