Commission des Libertés Civiles, Justice et Affaires Intérieures (LIBE), Parlement Européen
Valsamis Mitsilegas, Anneliese Baldaccini
The note reviews the development and the interdependence of the various initiatives and legislative proposals in the fields of counter-terrorism and police cooperation at the European level. It will be demonstrated that a vast majority of these measures involve the collection and exchange of personal data. The challenges of this approach to the protection of fundamental rights, in particular privacy and data protection, will be highlighted. The note covers a wide range of issues such as money laundering and terrorist financing, Europol, databases and their interoperability, the principle of availability of information, the rules to improve police cooperation (Schengen and Title VI), the Prüm Decision and data protection. One could says that the EU counter-terrorism and police co-operation measures are based largely on the gathering and exchange of personal data. This may lead to maximisation of surveillance via the collection of a wide range of personal data and thus pose significant challenges to privacy and data protection. This is true in particular in the light of the fragmentation of the EU data protection framework applying to the various databases and forms of information exchange.