Brussels, 31 March 2022
On Thursday, the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) voted to approve the latest result of interinstitutional negotiations on Europol reform.
MEPs sitting on the Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs have endorsed an agreement reached between the Parliament and Council on the second part of Europol mandate reform. The agreement was confirmed with 52 votes in favour, 13 against, and 1 abstaining.
The reform aims to bridge information-sharing gaps by allowing Europol to propose to member states alerts that should be added to the Schengen Information System (SIS). To this end, the proposal foresees a new category of SIS alerts on third-country nationals “in the interest of the Union”. This way, Europol and member states could share more information about the movements of foreign terrorist fighters that are not EU citizens, and the information would be available to front-line officers in the member states.
Next steps
Before adoption, a European Parliament plenary will have to give its final approval to the proposal. It is scheduled for a vote during the June 2022 part-session.
In parallel, work continues on the other part of Europol mandate reform, where a trilogue agreement was confirmed by the LIBE committee in March.