Europol in Brief 2018
20 December 2019 (updated 4 years, 2 months ago)
Riehle_Cornelia_Neu_SW.jpg Cornelia Riehle LL.M.

In September 2019, Europol published a brochure offering statistics and updates of Europol’s year 2018. In 2018, Europol supported 1748 operations, the majority related to terrorism, cybercrime, and drug trafficking. 8266 operational reports were generated, mainly in the area of serious and organised crime. With 370 deployments in 2018, Europol’s mobile office support was a key feature of its support in 2018: overall, mobile offices were deployed to 43 countries. In addition, a record 1.1 million SIENA (Secure Information Exchange Network Application) messages were exchanged, the top five crime areas being robbery, drugs, fraud, immigration, and terrorism. Another record was achieved with regard to the number of searches conducted in the Europol Information System (EIS), with 4 million searches having been conducted in 2018. This constitutes an increase of 65% compared to 2017.. The Europol Platform for experts (EPE) allows its users to share non-personal data on crime and is used by law enforcement in more than 100 countries.

Thanks to the European Union Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA), the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA), and the EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT) (see eucrim news of 9 September 2019), Europol provides a serious of detailed threat assessment reports outlining key threats and trends.

Lastly, citizens are becoming involved in fighting crime via Europol’s websites, tracking the EU’s most wanted fugitives as well and items leading to locations where child abuse is perpetrated. The ‘No more ransom’ portal offers decryption for different types of ransomware infections (see eucrim news of 10 September 2019). In 2018, Europol reached its current maximum of staff at 1294 staff members.

News Guide

EU Europol

Author

Riehle_Cornelia_Neu_SW.jpg
Cornelia Riehle LL.M.

Institution:
Academy of European Law (ERA)

Department:
Criminal Law

Position:
Deputy Head of Section