Europol is an entity of the European Union and it is based in the Hague. It functions as a supporting institution for the competent agencies in combating organised crime, terrorism and other forms of serious crime affecting two or more Member States of the EU.

Traditionally, Europol can function as a hub between the police forces of two or more Member States, as some kind of a liaison. However, cooperation in the Euoprean Union is increasing, including the cooperation in the area of freedom, security and justice.

 Therefore the role of Europol is increasing as well: from being just a hub in between police forces to a more sophisticated entity with own, special possibilities and well-trained personnel from all Member States, working (exclusively) for Europol. 

In this way, Europol is becoming an increasingly larger factor in the field of European cross-border investigations, not only assisting the police forces of the different Member States and facilitating them, but also doing their own researches. 

Europol must be seen as the entity on the side of the investigations. Prosecutions and more legal (cross-border/ European) cooperation is done by Eurojust. In addition, there is also the ‘European Public Prosecutor’s Office’ (‘EPPO’) which is a completely different institution with own objectives (and powers to reach those).

The terrain of Europol is from origin assisting the police forces of the individual Member States when they bounce on their own borders. So Europol can help in all phases of an investigation. 

When there is a need for the police in one Member State to get to know information/ intelligence or even evidence from another Member State, Europol can help to find it. This can be to start a complete new investigation or ‘just’ to improve the burden of proof.

Furthermore, Europol is well known to be involved in the end of investigations, in the phase of localizing suspects and assisting in the arrests.

With the growing role of Europol, we now easily can say: Europol is acting in all kinds of mayor criminal cases. From financial fraud to drug and people trafficking and from the start to the end of the investigation, as long as it has a cross-border component, there is a high risk of Europol getting involved. Especially in the digital era we are living in; we can hardly think of any big criminal case in which there is no international context.

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We believe that the core problem is a lack of knowledge on the law of the European Union in criminal matters. This is relatively new terrain, in which the domestic judges are hardly educated or even trained. 

Therefore, we believe that a good defense starts with the relevant knowledge. Truth has to be told, the law of the European Union, in particular on the institutions of the European Union, is quite complex and comes on top of everything that has to be known by judges about domestic criminal procedural rules. When we combine this with all the digital challenges of the modern age, the first step is to have an experienced criminal defense lawyer in this field or even a team of such lawyers. 

There is particularly a need for such a team when there are prosecutions in different countries or to make strategical choices what to do where, with the end goal always in the back of the mind! 

What is crucial as well to have a proper defence, is to use the knowledge and experiences in a creative manner and look for other possibilities to fight what is done transnationally. That is especially the case now domestic judges tend not to want to get their hands dirty with such issues. Procedures before transnational judges could be an outcome. For example, our team member have experiences with procedures before the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Human Rights Committee.

In our experience, almost all cases with an international/ European context, are complex. However, national judges and prosecutors tend to make it very easy: they only control what is done in their own jurisdiction.

So the first problem in almost all cross-border investigations is that a suspect has to start procedures in other countries to fight for his right to test the legitimacy of certain acts or the reliability of the results thereof. This is already a high burden for the most and the raison d’être for our team: we live by the philosophy that all mayor criminal cases ask for a dedicated team with the right legal knowledge of and expertise in cross-border cooperation in criminal matters.

On top of that, if Europol is involved, problems are becoming even bigger. Because Europol relies on non-disclosure of almost everything they do, while national judges don’t know how the handle acts executed by Europol or, even broader, by institutions of the European Union.