Europol publishes Annual Report 2007
Europol Information System content almost doubled last year
The Hague - The Netherlands.
The Hague - Today the Europol Annual Report 2007 was published. As in previous years, the fight against terrorism remains a top priority. In 2007, Europol continued to place particular emphasis on the support of the EU Member States in identifying networks of Islamist terrorism and other terrorist groups or networks posing a specific threat to the European Union.
New developments include a new counter terrorism tool, the "Check the Web" portal, which was developed and implemented by spring 2007 to share information on the use of the Internet by Islamist terrorists. Also as of 2 July 2007, the First Response Network was operational. This network allows flexible support for Member States' investigations immediately after terrorist incidents. It consists of more than 50 anti-terrorist experts from all Member States. Consequently, the Counter Terrorism Task Force 2, which was created to provide support to Spain after the Madrid attacks in 2004, was transferred to this future-oriented network.
In relation to serious and organised crime, the priorities in 2007 were drugs trafficking, smuggling and trafficking in human beings, fraud, commodity counterfeiting, intellectual property theft, money laundering and euro counterfeiting. Europol is the Central Office for combating euro counterfeiting, making it also the worldwide contact point. In May 2007, Europol therefore organised the First International Conference on the “Protection of the Euro against Counterfeiting” which more than 300 experts from the international law enforcement environment and central banks attended.
As part of the operational project on euro counterfeiting, several initiatives led to focused operational action inside and outside the euro area. Europol successfully supported an investigation against a Colombian criminal network producing and distributing counterfeit banknotes. As a result of this operation, nine persons were arrested and 400.000 counterfeit euro and hundreds of millions of counterfeited US dollars, Colombian pesos and Venezuelan bolivar were seized.
This operational success was only possible because the Member States increased their use of Europol services last year and thereby provided more information for the Europol databases.
Hence the number of cases initiated showed an increase of 5% from 7246 in the year 2006 to 7618 in the year 2007. The number of related messages increased even more from 210,268 in 2006 to 260,463 last year - an increase of almost 24%. Additionally, at the end of 2007 the Information System contained 62,660 objects compared to the 34.742 objects at the beginning of the year.
For the Director of Europol, Max-Peter Ratzel, the year 2007 set important milestones for Europol: "The three protocols amending the Europol Convention were implemented. Furthermore, the Member States decided that the Europol Convention would be replaced by a European Council decision. The change in Europol's legal basis will have significant implications for the organisation. Consequently, Europol will become an even more effective cooperation platform for the Member States."
The full text of the Europol Annual Report 2007 can be downloaded from the Europol website: www.europol.europa.eu.
For further questions please contact:
EUROPOL
Corporate Communications
Mr. Gerald Hesztera +31 70 352 1563 - gerald.hesztera@europol.europa.eu
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