The European Commission decided to halt talks on a cooperation agreement between Israel and Europol, it was revealed this week. Jerusalem and Brussels have been discussing in the past year an agreement for sharing intelligence between Europol and Israeli Police.

On Sept. 14, Israel’s envoy to the European Union Haim Regev and representative of the European Commission signed a statement of the completion of negotiations, for the exchange of information on terrorism and serious crimes. For the agreement to be fully adopted, it requires an approval by the Council of the European Union (ministerial level) and ratification by the European Parliament. It now seems that the commission is backing away from the proposed agreement, estimating that in its current drafting it will not receive the approval of the council or the European Parliament.  

Europol is the EU agency for law enforcement cooperation, coordinating joint actions and intelligence-sharing between European police forces. It deals with a variety of issues such as terrorism, international drug trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking and more. All these issues are extremely relevant to Israel.

In fact, Israeli law enforcement agencies are constantly dealing with cross-continent crimes in these domains, and often in bilateral cooperation with parallel European law enforcement agencies. More so, Israeli Police has been cooperating with Europol for many years, and even has a permanent representative sitting at the agency’s headquarters in The Hague.