Press Conferences

EU Vice President/Justice, Freedom & Security Commissioner Franco Frattini (center) addresses the press with US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (right) and US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, following signing of EUROJUST-US Agreement.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

PRESS ROUNDTABLE

WITH

GIJS DE VRIES, EUROPEAN UNION COUNTERTERRORISM COORDINATOR

MAX-PETER RATZEL, DIRECTOR OF EUROPOL

MICHAEL KENNEDY, DIRECTOR OF EUROJUST

NOVEMBER 8, 2006

Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, DC

MATTIAS SUNDHOLM: Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for coming. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Mattias Sundholm. I’m the new deputy spokesman here at the delegation. So thank you very much for coming.

Thank you very much also to the three high-level visitors we have today – first of all Mr. de Vries, the EU anti-terrorism coordinator. We have Mr. Ratzel, director of Europol, and we have the president of the College of Eurojust, Mr. Kennedy.

I will simply just ask you to – first we will have some introductory remarks from the three gentlemen, and then I will ask you to, before you ask your questions, just please state your name and affiliation. And we will try to pass around the microphone for recording purposes. Can we see if the microphones work as well for the reporters when they ask their questions?

So thank you very much again, and I’ll leave the floor to Mr. de Vries.

GIJS DE VRIES: Good morning. The reason why we’re here is that the European Union and the United States have a close working relationship in the field of counterterrorism. There are regular meetings between the Attorney General and the Secretary for Homeland Security on the US side, and the Presidency of the European Union and the European Commission on or side, and we just had one of our regular meetings yesterday in which also the directors of Europol and Eurojust participated.

As Mike Kennedy will explain, we had an important agreement ready for signature yesterday which will strengthen the operational cooperation between the United States judicial authorities and Eurojust, but we’ve also explored the wider agenda on counterterrorism.

The fight against terrorism in Europe of course primarily involves national police forces, national intelligence services, national judicial authorities. The EU has 25 member states, soon 27, and it’s important that in fighting terrorism, the lead is taken by the authorities that are closest to local reality, so national forces. This is not directed from Brussels. The EU of course is not a federal state.

However, as we are seeing increasingly that the international dimension of terrorism is fundamental, the role of the Union in recent years has been growing significantly. I will not go into all the detail. Suffice it to say that the first EU counterterrorism strategy was adopted by our heads of state government in December of last year, that we’ve now had a year of implementing that strategy, and that it basically ranges from the prevention of radicalization and recruitment via the protection of targets and protection of borders – so the hardening of targets, the classic domain of homeland security here, via the law and orders trend, so breaking up terrorist networks and bringing terrorists to justice – to finally the dimension of post-conflict assistance, post-emergency assistance, allowing, therefore, member states to assist each other after a major attack.

Must of that work is done of course between the 25, but there is also close cooperation with our partners elsewhere. With the US we have an important treaty to protect maritime shipping. The container agreement between the EU and the US is fundamental to preserving our mutual economic interests. As you know, much of international trade is maritime trade, and most of that maritime trade is container-borne, so to protect transatlantic container shipping, it is essential to preserve the global economy.

Another agreement we have is on protecting airline passengers – the passenger name record agreement recently renewed – and two agreements we hope will enter into force fairly soon, one on extradition and one on mutual legal assistance. Furthermore, there is close cooperation in the field of intelligence and in the field, for example, of combating terrorist financing, to name a few examples.

A recent illustration of how we work together is the new rules on what people can bring onboard of airlines when they travel. The EU and the US have not adopted identical rules, but they are basically very, very similar and have been elaborated in close consultation. That doesn’t mean we agree about everything. There are several issues about which we disagree, and they have to do with the balance between liberty and security and the role of human rights.

So, that’s just by means of a very brief, general, bird's-eye view of what we do and what the state of our relationship is. I think I’ll pass on to Mike Kennedy and Max-Peter Ratzel to talk about the growing role of their agencies in Europe and internationally.

MICHAEL KENNEDY: Thanks, Gijs.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a pleasure to be here. And as Gijs has already said, the main purpose of our visit to the United States was the meeting that took place yesterday between EU ministers for Justice and Home Affairs, and the attorney general of the United States and the secretary of State for Homeland Security.

But in the margins of that meeting, we signed a formal cooperation agreement between Eurojust and the United States, which has been subject to quite long negotiations, which were concluded earlier this year, and the formal procedures of approving the agreement within the European Union were concluded only a few weeks ago, but this opened the way for us to actually sign the agreement yesterday. For us it marks a key and important milestone in the development of our organization, and in particular the development of the organization’s relationship with countries outside the European Union.

We have concluded agreements before the one with the United States. We have signed agreements with Norway, with Iceland, and with Romania, and we’re negotiating with other countries, including the Russian Federation and the Ukraine.

But as you probably know, Eurojust is an organization which facilitates and encourages cooperation between investigating and prosecuting authorities so that it makes the national authorities within the European Union more effective when dealing with cross-border crime.

And as I’m sure you know, within the European Union, although we’ve opened the borders for commerce and trade, the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting crime is a national responsibility and remains the responsibility of the individual member states, and our purpose is to make them work better together to cross these barriers that exist between the different systems which operate in Europe.

Many of the cases we deal with are internal within the European Union, but equally, many relate and include countries within the European Union and link to countries outside Europe, and indeed many to the United States, which is one of the reasons we were keen to conclude this agreement.

One of the articles in the agreement relates specifically to closer cooperation being developed through the appointment of a liaison prosecutor, to be based at Eurojust, and I’m very pleased that the United States have already nominated a person to fulfill this role, and she will be taking up an office in our premises I hope before Christmas. I’ve already been in touch with her. Her name is Mary Ruppert and she’s ready to take up this post, and we look forward to developing that relationship. And it will mean that the United States will have a formal link and will actually be almost part of Eurojust officially, and equally it will mean for those of us working within the European Union, that we will have a direct contact to an experienced prosecutor from the United States within our building who can help us make the necessary contacts and exchange information with the US authorities in a formal way. I expect this to be a huge step forward.

And just by way of example, I can’t go into detail but we have a terrorism case that involves several European Union member states with links to the United States, and there will be a specific coordination meeting taking place in December to which, as a result of the agreement, we were now able to invite representatives from the United States to attend. So there will be prosecutors from the US, and Mary Ruppert included, who will be attending that meeting, and it opens the door to real, actual cooperation, and we hope effective, coordinated action, because although it’s possible for us to coordinate in Europe with this agreement and other agreements, it means that we can work much more effectively with partners outside the European Union as well.

Thank you.

MAX-PETER RATZEL: So then I will take the opportunity also to give you some information concerning Europol. The reasons for us to have been here are the same as it was mentioned by the previous speakers, by Gijs de Vries and by Mike Kennedy. For Europol it’s a little bit more experience on the road in the cooperation with the United States. We have concluded operational agreements with the US some years ago, and luckily we have been able to exchange also liaison officers with the United States. Currently we have two liaison officers of Europol who are posted here in the Delegation of the Commission, and are together with the various federal and state authorities in the United States. Both of them are represented today here in the meeting. And additionally, there has come to be three liaison officers of the United States who are working in The Hague on behalf of their agencies. One is representing the United States Secret Service, the other one is representing the FBI, and the third one is representing the Drug Enforcement Agency. And we have now confirmation from two other agencies that they will be ready to send, additionally, two liaison officers to Europol in spring 2007, one coming from ATF (US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives) and the other one coming from the United States Postal Inspection Service.

Our responsibility is similar to that. Eurojust, which has been represented by Mike Kennedy earlier, they are mainly in charge of supporting the member states’ efforts in the fight against cross-border crime, including organized crime and terrorism. But our role is mainly a coordinating role and providing crime analysis to the member states. In the competent authorities especially we have very good representatives working together with Europol.

In addition to that, we also cooperate horizontally, so we have a close cooperation to Eurojust, and whenever it’s possible we try to train our efforts on the law enforcement side by close cooperation between Europol and Eurojust, and we also try to set up common teams in order to support the member states. As we said, Europol is a police office, but we do not have any coercive power, so we cannot arrest people, we cannot do house searches, we cannot do seizures. This is what is done by the national competent authorities in the EU.

Currently we are following five different areas of priorities. The main priority is of course the fight against terrorism, but beside that, we are very active in the [fight against] trafficking of human beings, financial crime – there are some links to terrorism financing, but also drugs trafficking, also sometimes with links to terrorism – and the counterfeiting of the euro. So Europol plays a vital and central role for the euro – (unintelligible) – in Europe.

We have had some good experiences in the cooperation with the United States’ federal and state authorities, and my offer to the United States is mainly that we are complementing the existing bilateral agreements and the existing bilateral cooperation. So it’s not Europol’s role to jeopardize any bilateral cooperation, but it’s a complementary tool to get information, especially in crime analysis from the EU level, which may be different from the information and from the analysis from a pure national point of view.

And so far I’m more than happy to have been here, to have been able to be part of the discussions, and especially in the – (unintelligible) – would have some additional information exchange with some colleagues here in the United States. Thank you.

MR. SUNDHOLM: Thank you very much. And now I believe all three of our visitors are ready for questions that you might have.

Q: Michael, I was wondering if you would be able to give any more details about what the US liaison would actually bring to this prosecution case that you mentioned that’s going to happen – the case is going to be prosecuted in Europe. What does a US liaison officer bring to the table in that case?

MR. KENNEDY: I don’t know anything about the case and I’m not prepared to go into details of the case. I just know that it’s a case that’s been introduced by one of the European Union member states involving links to other European Union member states and to the United States.

We’ve made approaches through the country that – bringing the case to you just for coordination, and those approaches have been very well received in the United States, and they’re keen to send people to be involved in this particular meeting.

Now, as I don’t know anything about the case, I can’t answer your question specifically, but what I would imagine is that there are links either in terms of evidence gathering to ensure that evidence that exists in the United States is brought and considered by those that are dealing with the case. It’s reviewed and there will be an exchange of information, I would imagine.

And what we find in these sort of cases is that there is a pooling of information that’s been gathered by different investigating authorities, often perhaps investigating the same network or linked networks. And part of the benefit of pooling this information is that frequently people are able to share information and get information from others that they didn’t know existed. That’s the benefit in these sort of meetings. And when you have as much information as possible available, it means the quality of the decision-making is going to be much more improved rather than European Union states working either individually or bilaterally.

The multilateral cooperation that is necessary to solve these cases is better dealt with having all the parties around the table, and the existence of this agreement that we’ve just signed means that we have the formal structure and framework to enable the exchange of information which is so important in handling theses cases.

Q: If I could just follow up, what specifics – what specific difference is it going to make? Because, I mean, you guys have been saying for years that you’re all lovey-dovey and you’re cooperating as far as the law allows.

MR. KENNEDY: I don’t know when you got a quotation from me saying that.

Q: So it’s been horrible for the last couple of years?

MR. KENNEDY: Well, there has not been the capacity for multilateral cooperation between the United States and the European Union member states. There has been a structure and framework for bilateral cooperation which has been available to the United States. But Eurojust – and indeed Europol – bring a multilateral approach to these cases. We’re dealing with organized criminal gangs, whether they’re trafficking drugs or trafficking people, money laundering or involved in fraud. They’re no respecters of frontiers. These frontiers go outside the European Union to the United States, to Canada, to Africa, to the Far East, to the Russian Federation and so on.

Yes, there has been good cooperation, but what we’re bringing to the table now is a new approach. We have not had a formal agreement in place to allow the exchange of information with the United States up until yesterday afternoon.

Q: Just a follow-up question. Can you say why it’s taken this long., because I know that there has been negotiations underway for at least a couple of years to get such a mechanism in place. I mean, was there something holding that up, or can you go into what the differences were between the EU and the United States in particular?

MR. KENNEDY: Well, there are a number of issues. I think first the approach of the United States has always been to develop strong bilateral links, and it has those bilateral links with almost all the European member states that have been developed over many decades, and that have worked, and so effectively. But now we have this multilateral approach and within Europe we have made arrangements through the Eurojust decision, through the Europol arrangements for there to exchange of information about investigations and prosecutions.

This has been done under a data protection structure that is quite different from the arrangements that operate in the United States. And when we went and started negotiations with the United States authorities – we have to be frank – there were such differences in terms of data protection regimes that this formed one of the barriers. We could not reach an agreement that didn’t include reasonably robust data protection provisions because this would not have been approved by the member states of the European Union.

We have been involved in these long negotiations because we have stuck [it] out to have a basic data protection framework put in place as part of this regime. And the United States authorities have accepted a good number of articles within this new agreement that cope with data protection provisions to our satisfaction, and indeed to the satisfaction of our joint supervisory body for data protection, which oversees the way we operate and the way we cooperate with countries within the European Union, but also outside.

Q: Did the issue of SWIFT come up at all, financial monitoring?

MR. KENNEDY: Not within this negotiation, no.

Q: Can I follow up just on what you were saying – (inaudible)? I have the impression – I don’t know how it is in trade, but I have the impression when it comes to counterterrorism, the US values bilateral relations more than with EU. It will deal with EU when it needs a one-stop shop, but will look to run around the EU when it suits it. Do you think that that’s changing, and how are you making it change?

MR. DE VRIES: First of all, I think the two are complementary. They’re complementary not just in terms of the relationship across the Atlantic, but also the relationship within Europe. As I’ve said, most operational work of necessity takes place at national levels. Take the fight against ETA. The Spanish and the French have considerably strengthened their bilateral cooperation in the fight against ETA and that cooperation is yielding significant results. But it doesn’t make any sense to require the French and the Spanish to pass through Brussels, but they do. They do that bilaterally. So the two levels, frankly, are complementary.

That means that it’s perfectly normal and, in my view, necessary for United States agencies to work with our counterparts in relevant EU member states. Not all terrorist-related cases affect all 25, so you need to work with the countries and the agencies that are relevant. However, as Mike Kennedy [and] Max Ratzel have underlined, in Europe increasingly we find that we do not always know who is connected to whom unless we have meetings of experts from the member states to discuss whether there are links that may not have been previously identified. So basically it depends on the nature of the case.

Increasingly what we see is that US authorities are recognizing the added value of working with EU agencies in addition to the bilateral link. Cooperation with Eurojust has just been mentioned; cooperation with Europol is being increased as well. Outside those two agencies we have, for example, cooperation at the level of the United Nations when it comes, for example, to strengthening the role of the UN – was just a meeting in September, the first ever UN strategy against terrorism, which is being adopted. The EU has been a prime moving factor behind that initiative, and we’ve worked closely with the United States in that arena. And there are several other examples. Again, that doesn’t mean we agree about everything.

MR. RATZEL: May I just add to this question some practical remarks, or practical example, and you may be bored as you have heard it yesterday, but it’s really demonstrating the difference of a pure bilateral to multilateral approach. We have an ongoing case in Europe without any participation of US authorities until now. The regional police force is investigating a terrorism case and they had the idea – just the idea – that there would be some international links but they didn’t have evidence for that. So they saw the modus operandi, and there are some other indicators which enabled us to say there should be some international links.

And then they came to Europol and asked us, do you know more about these guys; do you know more about phone numbers, about modus operandi, et cetera, and in this still-ongoing case we could connect this case from one member state until now to three other member states. This would not have been possible without any multilateral platform, without a data exchange by Europol. And this could also lead again – I don’t know, but it could lead to connections in the US

So the added value is really, as it was said by Gijs and by Mike, is that you have a complementary tool. In the end, if this case will be developed, it may even be dealt bilaterally, but the main ideas have been given from the multilateral platform, and this is important. This is also important as an offer to the US authorities to ask for additional opinion. Once they ask Europol, they ask in reality 25 member states, and in addition, two bilateral questions.

Q: Could you just list the precise US agencies that you cooperate with, particularly in terms of is the CIA (US Central Intelligence Agency) one of them, because we all know the CIA is very busy on – (inaudible). Have you any oversights or any knowledge of what the CIA is doing, and did this issue come up at all at the state meeting?

MR. RATZEL: We cooperate with a lot and with a big variety of US authorities on the federal level but also on the state level, and even in some cases on the local level once they need a special support from Europol, and we can provide them with that special support.

And I’ve been here in April this year. I also had a meeting with the CIA people, and the cooperation of the CIA is a little bit difficult for us as they are not a law-enforcement agency; they are a security agency. But nevertheless, what we can do and what we have done is we have exchanged opinion, we have exchanged points of view, we have tried to exchange experience. And what we tried to do is to develop common understanding in the fight against terrorism in order to know what has to be developed in the future to follow a common approach.

One of the exercises which we are still going through is to find a common basis and common platform for worldwide crime fighting in nowadays times. It seems to be rather easy if you look from outside, but you bring together meanwhile very different cultures in the fight against terrorism, bring together very different experiences from different organizations. And this is still a problem and a question of mind-setting, and a problem and a question, as it was said earlier by Gijs and by Mike, of different legal systems, of different data protection standards, of different confidentiality regimes.

And you must have a permanent contact between staff members in order to identify the different problems and to identify possibilities to overcome the situation. This goes in so far back to your question, why does it take that long time to renegotiate? It’s really very specific and very detailed.

Q: Can I ask a follow-up question?

Q: Did you want to follow up on it?

Q: I just want to be clear. So there is no cooperation between any of these EU bodies – Eurojust, Europol – and the CIA?

MR. KENNEDY: I can only speak for Eurojust. We’re must more downstream. I mean, our involvement is in hard investigations where there is an exercise of influence in powers or in prosecutions, and dealing with the interaction between the judicial systems, not the intelligence systems. We’re not an intelligence organization, so it’s not envisaged that we would be part of a relationship with the CIA, for example, or indeed with other security services within the European Union.

Our opposite numbers will be the Department of Justice and prosecutors, both at a federal and possibly a state level, but also organizations such as the DEA (US Drug Enforcement Administration), and those involved in looking for perhaps coordinated arrests or coordinated house searches, maybe in the United States and in the European Union at the same time. That’s the sort of coordination that we look to set up, and I wouldn’t expect to be involved with the CIA.

MR. DE VRIES: Perhaps just to clarify one point. Not to restate the obvious, there is of course a basic asymmetry transatlantically. The United States is a federal state with strong federal agencies. The European Union is not a federal state. There is no equivalent of the CIA in the European Union. There is, technically speaking, no equivalent of the FBI at EU level, simply because that’s not the way the EU is being built up. It’s much more of a bottom-up enterprise than a top-down one.

So it’s natural for the CIA, as it does, to cooperate with its counterparts, which are the bilateral intelligence and security agencies of member states, but there is no operational – operational equivalent of the CIA at EU level. What we have at EU level is a Center for Threat Assessment, an analytical center where the European intelligence and security agencies share their understanding of developments in the terrorist threat. But that is not an operational equivalent of the CIA.

If I might just very quickly give you another example about what it actually amounts to, this practical cooperation between the EU and the US As you know, identity fraud is a classic instrument of many criminals, and of terrorists in particular. Falsified passports are being used frequently. There is a global database of lost and stolen passports at Interpol. That database needs strengthening. So the EU has approached the United States, a year and a half ago, and suggested that both the United States and all EU member states should provide Interpol with all domestic information about the thousands of lost and stolen passports in the United States and the EU. That is now happening.

So basically we’ve used the link to strengthen a global database as a tool in the fight against terrorism. That’s an example of the additional role of the EU in connection to that of the member states.

Q: (Inaudible) – for doing this this morning. I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind going down just a little bit further on the data protection framework, and specifically what types of information were you, in the negotiations, not seeing eye-to-eye with the United States on, and then what the outcome was on those.

MR. KENNEDY: As I said, I think, earlier, we have a completely different approach to data protection within the European Union to that in the United States. There have been previous agreements negotiated between the European Union and the US authorities which had not had much in terms of data protection commitment gone into. On this occasion we have had a fairly clear mandate that we would not reach an agreement that would be approved by our data protection supervisory body unless we addressed these issues. So we were quite firm on them.

And we’ve introduced effectively a range of issues into our agreement that have been accepted by the United States that did not exist in previous agreements, and they relate to data quality and proportionality; they relate to privacy of the data that’s being protected, the rights of data subjects to have access to the information to rectify, and also special provisions in relation to transparency, highly sensitive data, and the limitation related to storage. But we focused, as a way to solving the problem, in resolving it by dealing with the national – letting the national laws be applied and accepted in each side of the negotiations, as it were.

Q: So does that mean there’s kind of a patchwork of data that the data protection sort of rules or –

MR. KENNEDY: Well, it means that there is a range of new rules that the United States have committed to that we are satisfied they will adhere to within the national laws, and they’re capable of dealing with to the satisfaction of our data protection people. And it’s actually something that is committed to and is written within the agreement formally.

Q: Do you mind drilling down just a little further? When storage is an issue, what did the US want, what did you want, what was the resolution?

MR. KENNEDY: The resolution is that – well, firstly, we have, within our own agreement, the agreement that’s set up with Eurojust, we’ve got fairly specific data protection provisions in relation to retention of data and review of data, looking at a three-year period. Within the United States this is dealt with by national law and is something that we were satisfied that could be retained by the prosecutors that receive that information, and that it would be retained within the period that is satisfactory to us in terms of the national US law.

Q: And so what was that time period – (inaudible)?

MR. KENNEDY: It depends, and it’s a matter for national law to decide.

MR. KENNEDY: US national law.

Q: When do these rules come into play? I mean, obviously these are not rules that we’re using internally for ourselves, but when there is a cooperative investigation, when there’s sharing, when there’s coordination, when specifically do the mechanisms come into play and then how are they enforced?

MR. KENNEDY: The mechanisms come into play when data is exchanged. And this will be in meetings that might take place relating to a specific case.

Q: So informally exchanged person to person? Do we have a technological infrastructure to exchange this data too?

MR. KENNEDY: At the moment it will be exchanged person to person. It will be in meetings prosecutor to prosecutor so that the prosecutor representing or attending at Eurojust or the national member of Eurojust with the United States representative.

Q: And that’s the woman you referred to earlier?

MR. KENNEDY: Yes.

Q: Okay.

Q: And can this information be shared with other law enforcement – I mean, because I understand one of the sticking points was that the US wanted to share the information received from European entities across the law-enforcement spectrum, which is, what, a 17-member intelligence community?

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, the exchange with the prosecutor for the specific purpose for which it was exchanged. And so it’s restricted to that.

Q: So it can only go from justice – from like DOJ (US Department of Justice)  to Eurojust and that would be it.

MR. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Q: So it couldn’t go to the CIA or national terrorism, right, or DHS (US Department of Homeland Security)?

MR. KENNEDY: Well, the responsibility under the agreement is that it should be kept in that way.

Q: You mean on that specific case or just among those two specific agencies? You said for the specific purpose –

MR. KENNEDY: The specific purpose if it was for terrorism would, be to keep that information for terrorist purposes.

Q: What types of information do you expect to be shared – (inaudible)? Can you give us a flavor for what types of material we’re talking about?

MR. KENNEDY: I would expect it would be persons and individuals who are being investigated or prosecuted within the European Union and that might be of interest to the United States authorities to whom there were links in an individual case.

Q: So we’re really talking about sort of specific targets – you’ll be sharing case files – (inaudible)?

MR. KENNEDY: I think data on case files rather than case files themselves.

Q: Could we go back? I still don’t understand how information would be shared. I mean, you have issues of information sharing of course in this country about who shares what, and it doesn’t always work smoothly. But, I mean, one of the things that you constantly hear with the PNR (passenger name records) agreement in particular, that the Americas were crowing about, is that they’ve got the right to take this PNR data and give it to everybody inside the law enforcement community, which I understand is something that’s been – the interpretation may be a little bit different on the other side, but this is increasingly what my understanding is that they want to do with data.

So terrorism data, which may be exchanged with the Department of Justice, they would ideally like to provide to the DEA, to Customs and Border Protection, to Immigration, Customs Enforcement – I mean, across the entire spectrum of federal law enforcement agencies. Now, is that allowed or is that not allowed, or it depends on a case-by-case basis?

MR. KENNEDY: I think it depends on a case-by-case basis. It’s the purpose of? the restriction. So if it’s supplied for terrorist purposes, it should be kept for terrorist purposes by the Department of Justice.

Q: But they could share it for counterterrorist purposes with other agencies, US agencies – or not?

MR. KENNEDY: Yes.

Q: I mean, technically every US agency is involved in counterterrorism at this point, so do they all receive that information?

MR. KENNEDY: Not according to the FBI.

(Laughter.)

Q: I mean, so Homeland Security and the Secret Service and so on, they would technically have access to this information?

MR. KENNEDY: Yes.

MR. DE VRIES: On the PNR agreement, of course that was a point of discussion. The US side wanted a new possibility to disseminate that information to a wider audience, and the dealers need to say, if you want to do that, you have to provide an equivalent level of data protection. In other words, the data protection rules – if you want to spread more information, simultaneously you spread the protection level. And that’s the deal that we accepted.

So, incidentally, that’s not a novel issue. We have exactly the same discussion inside Europe. One of the strategic objectives of the EU is to improve data sharing among national law enforcement agencies in the European Union. One way of doing that is to give them direct access to databases in other member states. So one of the issues on the table is whether national police forces could have access to DNA databases in other member states directly. If you do, though, you must simultaneously improve your data protection level.

So we have two proposals on the table at the moment under consideration: one, more data exchange; two, simultaneously, more data protection.

Q: But who has the oversight that the Americans are going to be complying with –

MR. DE VRIES: DHS. In the PNR case, DHS is responsible for the monitoring of the implementation of that.

MR. RATZEL: Let me also give you a practical example from Europol’s side. Europol is functioning to a certain extent internally in the EU and follows the same principles. So if you get data, especially personally related data from one member state, they can give us restrictions, ending codes on the data, and they can restrict the use of the data for various purposes, and they can restrict and limit the purposes on specific crime phenomena or on specific cases. And they can also tell us, please don’t share the data with other partners without our special acceptance. And then in case we come to a cross match, they give a feedback to the owner of the data. And then in extended cases we get the agreement to exchange the data, but also in that case we have to inform the agency who receives the data that there is a limitation for a specific purpose, for a specific case, for a specific crime area as the owner of the data, the owner of the information would like to protect his ongoing investigations. And if he would not do this, it would jeopardize the ongoing investigations.

And so far the limitations of purposes can have various dimensions, and we have made a quite good experience with that as it gives us the – let’s say the trust of the partners that their data is handled accordingly. And one of the problems, and one of the obligations is, of course, all of our partners in these agreements, not only in the US but also other partners in the agreements, they have to guarantee that they follow the rules and the procedures.

Q: Could I just follow up on that? Is that going to be the way it works with this agreement as well? Because I read somewhere that prosecutors sharing that information will be able to place limits on how it’s – I mean, on a case – like not a general rule that you only maintain it for the purpose it was shared for, but more specifically, you know, like in the case of these police agencies, prosecutors will be able to say, well, this piece of data I don’t want, you know, to go anywhere else, or this.

MR. KENNEDY: That’s right. You’re very correct; that’s right. They can restrict that further exchange.

Q: I mean, does that work in the same way that the Europol, the process Mr. Ratzel laid out?

MR. KENNEDY: Yes.

Q: I mean, how useful is this data going to be to the Americans then if every piece of it is basically hedged around with a unique set of restrictions about how it can be shared?

MR. KENNEDY: You’d have to ask the Americans; I don’t know.

MR. RATZEL: But you can overcome the hedge of restrictions. As I have tried to explain, we have the same situation in Europol, and once our analysts see that there are links, or possible links, to other data, then they go back to the owner of the data and they inform him or her, and then extended cases, they get the permit to give the data to the other one, but people do not want to share the data unlimited. And this is, from my point of view, also understandable. We have to protect the sources, we have to protect ongoing investigations, and we have to guarantee that the data flow will be also available in future.

Q: And how long does that take?

MR. RATZEL: Therefore they need a common understanding and a trustful environment.

Q: How long does that take for that process that you laid out? I know –

MR. RATZEL: It goes very fast because this is the advantage of having a multilateral platform. The member states are represented in our agencies. We have about 570 people; more than 100 of them are tasked by the member states, so they are part of the Europol family, but they are working on behalf of the member states. All of the member states have liaison offices at Europol and we have a very fast and secure information exchange network so they can give the feedback to the member states, competent authorities, and they give the answers sometimes within hours, sometimes within minutes, if necessary.

Q: Can I just ask – the 10th of August, the bomb attacks. Was Europol involved in any way or have any prior knowledge of this operation?

And just a quick follow up for Mike. Could you just say the name of the lady – (inaudible) – go to and which department she’s from, Mary Ruppert?

MR. RATZEL: So the bombs, you mean in London.

Q: Yeah, was Europol involved in any way?

MR. RATZEL: Not in advance as it was pure internal investigation and internal data exchange in the UK, but we have been involved immediately after the blast. We have supported the U.K and they have also delivered a lot of data to us, and it was very helpful for us, for example, to have had a common meeting with the investigators following the London plots. And I think the same meeting took place also at Eurojust, in the exchange of a lot of best practice and a lot of experience with the London people. And for that meeting we could invite all the representatives from the member states, and this is one area that we can provide the member states with a common platform of experience and of best practice.

Q: Did anything come out of that?

MR. DE VRIES: The second question was to you, Mike.

MR. KENNEDY: Sorry, just to finish the second question. It’s Mary Ruppert – R-U-P-P-E-R-T. She’s, as I understand it, a federal prosecutor from the Department of Justice here in Washington.

Q: Could I just ask about information flow? How would you characterize, until now, the information – transatlantic information flow? I mean, have you found the US willing to share as eagerly as you think the Europeans have been willing to share, or has it been more of a, we’re all for information sharing; give us what you have, and a reluctance to reciprocate?

MR. RATZEL: This is a very interesting question and the answer is very sophisticated. The investigator – and you have really to look a little bit behind the curtain – the investigator himself, or herself, is a person who is in charge to bring a specific case to court, and so far an investigator is trained and educated to look backwards in a specific case and to look forward to bring the case to court. And the investigator is, per se, not oriented and not trained to look to the left or to the right to look for various additional links, and is not trained in specific cases to look forward to prevent crime.

And this is now a change in the mind-setting of law enforcement internal and of investigators in special to look more to the left and to the right, so horizontally, but also to look much more forward. And this changing of mind-setting is a changing of paradigm. It started, let’s say, about 10, 15 years ago, and it’s still ongoing. And based on this process, you have to evaluate in how far the exchange of data has been improved on the multilateral basis.

So the investigator, as a standard, exchanges data bilateral, in Europe as well as between Europe and the US And with a multilateral platform, we have now opened a new box, and this box has been opened for Europol since 1999. If we look into the increase of the data flow, then the success speaks for itself. We have an increase of the data flow concerning quantity of data; we have an increase of data flow concerning quality of data; and we have an increase of data flow concerning the timeliness. And especially the last – (inaudible) – the timeliness, is a very important thing from my point of view.

And similar is the situation in the US We have done a lot of work and we have now reached the situation that the US has also posted liaison officers to our agency, and liaison officers from us here, and liaison officers from their agencies to us. That will improve step-by-step information flow, also in quality and quantity and in timeliness. And this is an ongoing process, and I’m quite happy with the success we have had in the last years and so far.

Q: Are you finding the process to be somewhat one-sided? And just to – (inaudible) – a little more directly, are you at all concerned that the US isn’t carrying enough?

MR. RATZEL: From my point of view, the situation is still in the process to be improved, on both sides, but I see the strong commitment. As I’ve said earlier, we have now since nearly one year a liaison officer from the Secret Service; since three-quarters of a year, liaison officer from FBI; since three-quarters of a year from the – we have additional officers from ATF and from United States Postal Inspection Service. So that shows the clear commitment, but it’s also for them and you – they to access European Union and to access multilateral cooperation. And we have to give people also a little bit of chance to get familiar with that environment, and the liaison office who has been open in the first instance, the United States Secret Service, has been very successful also in operational cases.

So we have supported, for example, the dismantling of a print shop that they printed counterfeited euro currency in Colombia last week. And this was a common exercise between Spain, Colombia, United States Secret Service, and Europol, that shows how transatlantic cooperation works very practical.

MR. DE VRIES: Perhaps just to add the dimension of intelligence cooperation here, because what we’ve talked about so far is the law enforcement side. There has been consistently productive intelligence cooperation between the United States and its European partners for the past number of years. And that includes the periods of strong disagreement within Europe and transatlantically about the war in Iraq. Even at the height of that disagreement, intelligence cooperation was continued.

Of course, recently that cooperation has come under a cloud because of the allegations about renditions – CIA renditions, which are currently the subject of investigation by the Council of Europe and by the European Parliament. I don’t know the outcome of those investigations. That’s expected at the end of the year or early next year, but one thing I think is absolutely clear; it is essential, for a variety of reasons, to make sure that the fight against terrorism is conducted within a framework of international human rights and not outside.

I say this because, as you know, earlier this year the foreign ministers issued a statement requesting the United States to close Guantanamo. There has also been a statement in September of EU foreign ministers reemphasizing that they believe that secret prisons should not be a tool in the fight against terrorism. Secret prisons are immoral, they are illegal under international law, and they’re counterproductive in the fight against terrorism because they make it more difficult to win the struggle for hearts and minds, which ultimately is an absolutely key factor in the effectiveness of any counterterrorism strategy.

So that is important, that we, as Western countries, continue to place ourselves on the values that we have pledged to uphold, and that includes the fight against terrorism.

Q: Did you make any of these points yesterday?

MR. DE VRIES: Yes.

Q: You did.

Q: What was the reaction from the Americans?

MR. DE VRIES: The reaction has been to restate that the United States operates within its domestic system – (inaudible).

Q: Was there anything written into the agreement that sort of takes that into account? Because, I know that in the past some extraditions have been held up because of concerns that this person might be sent to a military tribunal or even been tried and put to death. Was there anything written into this that says that none of this will happen if this person is sent to a military tribunal or a military commission? Is there any prohibitions or restrictions on what the United States can do? (Inaudible.)

MR. KENNEDY: Not in that specific way, no, but we can deal with each case on a case-by-case basis. And there is the possibility for information to be exchanged and limited in the way I said, but there is nothing written in the agreement for that, and information that is given in exchange in the way I described can only be used for that particular purpose of which it is provided for investigation prosecution. It can only be used for other purposes with the specific consent to the person or the country that provides that information.

MR. DE VRIES: So this agreement is not about extradition. There is a separate agreement on extradition which has yet to enter into force. In that agreement there is a provision for the death penalty, or a provision allowing EU countries not to extradite to the United States unless they feel satisfied that the death penalty will not be imposed. So there we have found a solution. Many states in the United States still have the death penalty; the European Union opposes the death penalty, also in the fight against terrorism, and the agreement has been, therefore, to allow the possibility for individual member states not to extradite, depending on the situation. It hasn’t been –

Q: But renditions aren’t covered by that agreement.

MR. DE VRIES: I know. Illegal renditions, by definition, are not covered by law.

(Laughter.)

Q: But renditions – (inaudible).

MR. DE VRIES: No, no, no, no. I mean, without going into a long lawyerly discourse on renditions, I mean, the practice of rendition – that is to say, rendering a subject to another country – is a practice which is long-standing if you do it within a framework of law. But the word has become much more associated with a practice where it takes place outside a framework of law. They’re entirely different.

Q: Extrajudicial renditions. (Laughter.) The extradition one has not been passed, you said, right?

MR. DE VRIES: No, it’s not in force. It’s been signed. It’s been agreed, but it still needs to be implemented in a number of EU member states because technically it needs implementation by a national parliament, and it still needs to go to the Senate. I think it’s just been sent to the Senate, incidentally.

Q: You mentioned that the United States is acting – yesterday said that they’re acting within their own laws, but I think that some people have claimed in the United States recently their interpretation of US law seems to be a bit elastic or expanded, saying that we can do whatever we want just because the president was given more powers. I mean, just because they say that they’re following our own laws, is that satisfactory to all three of you, or do you need assurances that their interpretation of the law is a little bit more concretely defined than – (inaudible)?

MR. DE VRIES: The United States is a great and proud democracy, and it sets its own rules according to a democratic process under independent judicial control. I mean, the independence of the Supreme Court I think is beyond dispute. But that doesn’t mean that you always agree. I’ve quoted the formal statements by EU foreign ministers.

Q: Right.

MR. DE VRIES: I think that’s an answer to your question.

MR. SUNDHOLM: Just a couple more questions and then we have to wrap up.

Q: I have a little tangent I guess, that Minister Laitman (sp) mentioned yesterday also agreements EU with Russia. Could you – I mean, are these like these ones that you’ve signed with the US? Could you talk a little bit about that?

MR. KENNEDY: Well, this agreement that we signed with the US is specifically for investigations and prosecutions relating to the exchange of data related to that.

And just to follow up on the other question, it’s not an extradition arrangement. Extradition arrangements are bilateral between the United States and whichever European Union country they’re dealing with. We in Eurojust help to facilitate the European arrest warrant, a surrender mechanism, which has replaced extradition within the European Union. The United States is not party to those arrangements.

In terms of negotiations with the Russian Federation, yes, Eurojust has started negotiations with the Russian Federation, but there are data protection problems there too because of the regime that is in place within the Russian Federation, and they too are going to slow down the completion of any agreement that we reach with the Russian Federation. And the Finnish presidency of the European Union, for obvious reasons perhaps, they have a huge Russian Federation border along the Finnish border, and they are very keen to develop strong judicial cooperation and other cooperation to control that frontier and to deal with the problems that it creates for them. And this is one of the reasons why they’re pushing forward – the possible range of agreements between the European Union and the Russian Federation to deal with terrorism, to deal with police cooperation, to deal with judicial cooperation.

Q: I’m sorry, just to follow up. What happened then to the initiative agreed at the G-8 summit on Sea Island, the safety initiative, secure and facilitated travel, because that involved Russia and – I mean, I believe the EU was also an element of that, and the United States. Do you know how these –

MR. KENNEDY: Sorry, but I wasn’t party to any of that.

MR. DE VRIES: The EU isn’t formally part – is not part, period, of the G-8. The [European] Commission takes part and four member states take part, independently of the European Union. So whatever the G-8 decides is not decided by the EU.

I don’t have an immediate answer to your question on the initiative you mentioned, but on cooperation with Russia, I think Europol as well has had some contacts with the Russians about a strategic cooperation agreement which does not involve the sharing of individual data, also because the Russians still need to improve their data protection regime.

MR. RATZEL: This is currently the case. We have an agreement on the strategic basis with Russia, and the basis of this agreement, we also exchange information which is possible to be exchanged, and we are still waiting now for the implementation of some laws, which have been adopted by the Duma in Russia but also have been signed by President Putin, but until now they are not fully implemented, and this is a precondition that we can even have successful negotiations on a cooperation agreement with Russia.

Q: You mentioned last night an entity in Poland that’s doing something with the borders.

MR. DE VRIES: Frontex.

Q: Could you tell us a little bit about that, and is there any cooperation going on now with US authorities on border issues?

MR. DE VRIES: Well, very briefly, Frontex, again, is not a federal agency giving instruction to national border protection agencies. It is like Europol and Eurojust, an initiative whereby the agency helps the national participants share information, helps them to identify good practices, and hopefully best practices, and engages in a number of specific projects. So Frontex can help national border protection agencies to build surge capacity, for example, in certain urgent situations.

At the moment, Frontex is involved in helping the Mediterranean member states of the EU improve their cooperation to deal with the influx of migrants from across the Mediterranean. That’s their major preoccupation at the moment.

They will also have a task of course of assisting border authorities in the field of counterterrorism in terms of, for example, establishing exchange of information on patterns of risk. Risk analysis is critical to the functioning of the border agencies, and Frontex will help in establishing best practices there. It’s a young agency, still in the process of being built. They have relatively new premises in Warsaw. I think they’re about to move because they’re growing. But it’s one of the instruments to strengthen – (inaudible) – cooperation.

Q: Is there a link with DHS there, liaisons or anything?

MR. KENNEDY: Sorry, no, I don’t think at this point in time there is a direct cooperation with US authorities. The agency is focusing on the external land and sea borders of the EU. That’s a priority.

MR. SUNDHOLM: Last question.

Q: So it’s a very new organization. It’s only been in existence for less than 12 months.

MR. KENNEDY: It’s still in the process of building up.

Q: This if for all three of you, but in particular Mr. de Vries and Mr. Ratzel. I’m just curious in getting your thoughts on just patterns of terrorism, for instance like what do you think are the new trends in terrorism? I mean, are you seeing a lot of combatants coming back from Iraq into Europe? I know that’s been much discussed, but is there anything else that hasn’t really hit the public radar screen that you think is a problem that’s coming up right now that we should know about, that affects the United States or even just affects Europe?

MR. DE VRIES: An answer to that question will take us all day, in fairness, but to try to summarize, the effect of the war in Iraq has indeed been to encourage some non-Iraqis to join the insurgency. Most of the foreigners who went there come from countries ranging from Saudi Arabia to Algeria, but a few Europeans are known to have traveled there as well. Numbers remain fairly limited. But of course it’s not the numbers that count; it’s the skills that any particular individual may pick up and may wish to exercise upon his or her return. But so far we have not witnessed major trends in that respect.

What the war in Iraq of course has resulted in is a boost to efforts to radicalize particularly young Muslims and help recruit them into networks. So that’s the ideological effect, if you wish. What we also see is that in some EU member states, some individuals – again, this is not a phenomenon which is a very widespread one, but have converted to Islam. Now, there is nothing wrong, obviously, with individuals converting to any particular religion, including Islam, but some of the converts have then opted for the preparation of attacks.

We also see that in addition to men sometimes being the subject of efforts to radicalize, women have been, this being the case we know a few months ago of a Belgian lady – a Belgian convert who was recruited as the first European female suicide bomber in Iraq, Muriel Degauque. But I think that trends have been described elsewhere.

MR. SUNDHOLM: Thank you very much. Thanks for coming. (END)