The European Police Office (Europol) is the European Union (EU) law enforcement organisation that handles criminal intelligence. Its aim is to improve the effectiveness and cooperation between the competent authorities in the Member States in preventing and combating serious forms of international crime. Europol was not established to deal with local or minor offences, but to give a European dimension to the investigation of crime of a European dimension (Klip, 2009). The list of Europol-crimes has become longer over the years. The Europol Council Decision further extends the competence of Europol, as the existence of an organised criminal structure is no longer a limiting element (Dorn, 2009). The forms of crime over which Europol has competence are to be assessed by the competent national authorities in accordance with the national law of the Member States to which they belong. This often leads to the result that the competence of Europol is being interpreted in different ways throughout the EU. It has already been suggested for the sake of coherence to rely on uniform definitions for so-called ‘EU core crimes’ that would also fall within the competence of bodies and agencies dealing with security related issues (e.g. Europol, Eurojust, Frontex) (Vermeu len, 2002).
In two parts and a conclusion, this contribution will elaborate on the overall-question: How to shape the competence of Europol? The latter also in comparative perspective, by looking at the United States (US). Two research methods are combined throughout this contribution: a study of relevant literature and a critical analysis of relevant legal and policy documents, including the very latest. The first part is devoted to the competence of Europol. The first section (2.1) introduces Europol and identifies three ‘eras’ for further analysis. In the second section (2.2) the extension of the competence of Europol is analysed for the pre-Convention era (2.2.1), the Convention era (2.2.2) and the post-Convention era (2.2.3). Our main questions are: Was there a trigger to extend the competence of Europol time and again? Was there a genuine ‘need’ to do so? In the third section (2.3) the definition of the competence of Europol is examined, or rather the non-existence of definitions of Europol-crimes
(2.3.1). We ask ourselves the question: What could fill the absence of definitions of Europolcrimes?(2.3.2). The first part is used as a steppingstone for the second, comparative part. We compare EU law enforcement organisation Europol to its US counterpart, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The only comparisons between Europol and the FBI that have been carried out so far mainly concern executive powers (Ellerman, 2002 & 2005), leading to the conclusion that Europol is in no way a European equivalent of the FBI (Bruggeman, 2000; Corstens & Pradel, 2002), although the role of Europol in joint investigation teams could be a foretaste of an executive European Police Office (De
Moor, 2009). The question of competence ratione materiae has hardly ever been raised, whereas a comparison in this respect could be very useful for the Europol-case. The first section (3.1) introduces the FBI with its dual responsibility for law enforcement and national security. The second section (3.2) deals with the competence of the FBI, which is responsible for more than 200 categories of federal crime. How is the competence of the FBI defined? is our main question. First some basic constitutional features of the US criminal justice system are given (3.2.1). Then the federalisation of criminal law is
examined (3.2.2), as the extension of the competence of the FBI and the extension of federal criminal law go hand in hand. Mirroring the first part, both the extension (3.2.3) and the definition (3.2.4) of the competence of the FBI are covered.