European securityU.K. could lose access to terrorism, crime databases if it leaves the EU: Europol

Published 24 March 2016

Rob Wainwright, the director of the EU’s police agency Europol, said that if Britain left the EU, it could lose access to important databases of terror and criminal suspects needed to fight ISIS. Wainwright said databases provided “daily” benefit to UK police in protecting borders. Leaving the EU would put intelligence cooperation in danger, he said.

The British intelligence building // Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Rob Wainwright, the director of the EU’s police agency Europol, said that if Britain left the EU, it could lose access to important databases of terror and criminal suspects needed to fight ISIS.

Wainwright said databases provided “daily” benefit to UK police in protecting borders. Leaving the EU would put intelligence cooperation in danger, he said.

The BBC reports that Wainwright’s intervention comes after Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, wrote an article suggesting that leaving the bloc would be unlikely to affect intelligence gathering.

“Britain is Europe’s leader in intelligence and security matters and gives much more than it gets in return. It is difficult to imagine any of the other EU members ending the relationships they already enjoy with the U.K.,” the former head of the Secret Intelligence Service wrote in Prospect magazine. 

Wainwright suggested, however, that Sir Richard’s views were outdated because the situation had evolved since he retired more than a decade ago.

“I’ve seen huge progress in the EU in building up our far stronger capability to fight terrorism and serious crime,” Wainright told BBC Radio 4’s Today program.

“I see the benefits of that for British police authorities every day — the European Arrest Warrant being used to fast-track a thousand serious offenders off the streets of Britain every year; border officials in Britain having access to a unique database of 300,000 wanted criminal suspects and missing people as they enter borders.

“These are all unique instruments providing daily operational benefit to help British authorities protect their borders and protect their citizens.

“The idea that somehow we’d be safer by removing or diminishing our access to what are dozens of unique databases and police cooperation instruments that Britain has come to rely on in recent years is a serious miscalculation. It just doesn’t stand scrutiny.”

On the same show, David Davis, the shadow home secretary and a long-time Eurosceptic, criticized Wainwright’s defense of the EU’s contribution to policing.

Davis said that pulling out of the EU freedom of movement agreements would be a boon for the U.K.’s security.

“We do not do our primary intelligence cooperation through the European Union, we do it through deals with our partners — most particularly France and Germany on the continent,” he argued.

“What we’re doing is given ourselves back one of the most important weapons for dealing with terrorism — the ability to stop people at the border, check people at the border, and deport people we don’t want to keep- something we can’t do at the moment.

“Many of these killers — there’s no other word for them — are actually European Union citizens. Which means that even though we’re not a member of Schengen we can’t stop them from coming to Britain.”

Security experts note, though, that EU freedom of movement rules do explicitly allow member states to bar individuals “on grounds of public policy, public security or public health,” as stipulated in article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Britain, as a member of the EU, does give freedom of movement to all EU citizens — but they must pass through border controls and show passports, because Britain is not a member of the Schengen passport-free area.