Results (49 items)
No. Europol has no executive powers.
The European Police Office is a support service for the law enforcement agencies of the EU Member States. This means that Europol officials are not entitled to arrest suspects or act without the approval of national authorities. However, the support provided by Europol consists of tools that can contribute to the executive measures carried out by the relevant national authorities.
Europol supports the law enforcement activities of the Member States by:
Yes, Europol only acts on request at present. However, Article 7 of the Europol Council Decision, allows Europol to request the competent authorities of the Member States to investigate.
The Justice and Home Affairs Council adopted the Council decision of 27 March 2000 (amended by the Council decision of 6 December 2001 and the Council decision of 13 June 2002) which authorises the Director of Europol to enter into negotiations on co-operation agreements with third States and non-EU related bodies.
There are two types of co-operation agreements that can be signed. Strategic agreements are limited to the exchange of non-personal data, which means strategic and technical data. Operational agreements include the possibility to exchange personal data, which means data relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
No, in case you know about a crime being planned or a crime that has been committed and needs to be resolved, we ask you to report to your local police. Europol has no authority to arrest criminals or investigate on information provided by citizens. You can find additional information below.
No, Europol has neither the technical equipment nor the legal authorisation to wiretap or monitor members of the public by any technological means. Any information being analysed by Europol is provided directly by the co-operating law enforcement agencies. Europol’s principal role is to gather, analyse and re–distribute data.
All applications must be submitted via our online recruitment tool with the exception of applications for Seconded National Expert posts that must be submitted by email via the Europol National Units and, if necessary, the Liaison Bureaux. Applications sent in by other means (paper or e-mail) will not be accepted. Visit ‘How to apply’ page in our website for more information on the application process.
So-called restricted Annex II posts may be filled without limitation to candidates coming from a competent authority, as stipulated in Annex II of the relevant Decision of the Management Board of Europol defining the Europol posts that can be filled only by staff engaged from the competent authorities of the Member States. As a result, applications are invited from all EU citizens.
No; EU citizenship is an eligibility criterion.
The Staff Regulations do not impose an age limit for a candidate who would like to apply for a vacancy at Europol. Current pensionable age is 66 years old if one entered the service on or after 01/01/2014.
All eligibility criteria need to be fulfilled; otherwise your application cannot be considered.
Regarding the essential selection criteria:
However,
Tests and interviews are competency-based assessments, both held in English unless otherwise specified, and they may take place remotely or on-site. Tests vary in duration and may be eliminatory. The interview typically lasts 30-45 minutes. Further details can be found in the relevant vacancy notice and/or the invitation to participate in the selection procedure.
During the selection procedure, you will be asked a combination of competency-based and/or situational judgement questions, based on situations that you have encountered and/or would meet as part of your daily activities should you be successful in the selection process. We may also ask you knowledge-based questions on the subject matter and scenarios regarding some of the general competencies relevant to the role.
The same questions are asked to all the candidates. However, you can expect also follow-up questions, based on your own answers.
Before you attend the selection procedure, you are required to submit documentary evidence of your education and proof of employment. This may be sent by email in the form of pdfs.
Yes, please see the Decision of the Executive Director on the financial contribution to travel and accommodation expenses for candidates attending selection procedures and pre-employment medical examinations available on our website.
It means that within the next 2 years, you may receive a job offer from Europol for the post you applied for or for a similar role, should the business opportunity arise. It is not an obligation for Europol to offer you an employment, nor are you obliged to accept an offer of employment, if you are unhappy with its terms and conditions. You may review the status of established reserve lists on our website.
On our website and on LinkedIn; also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn!
You may subscribe to our website to receive an Email notification each time we publish a vacancy notice, internship or notice of secondment. You can also check our website regularly to be informed about the latest vacancies.
We started life as the Europol Drugs Unit way back in 1993. We’re celebrating our 20th birthday this year because Europol officially came to be in 1999 when the Maastricht Treaty (Article K3, to be precise) came into force.
In fact, 1999 was a big year for us: we published the first annual Organised Crime Trend Report, predecessor of the Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) and we launched one of our first tools for gathering, exchanging and processing information and intelligence: the catchy ‘analysis work file’ (today, ‘analysis work project’).
In 2001, we welcomed cooperation with non-EU countries – Iceland and Norway were our first ‘third parties’. From 2010 things changed quickly for Europol, we became an EU Agency in 2010, set up the European Cybercrime Centre in 2013, the European Migrant Smuggling Centre and the European Counter Terrorism Centre both in 2016, and the European Serious and Organised Crime Centre and the EU Internet Referral Unit in 2017.
We have staff from all 27 EU Member States – and more! As we are active in many crime areas, countries across the globe are eager to share and benefit from our tools and expertise. In 1999, Europol had 170 staff members from 15 countries. Now the Europol building hosts around 1 400 staff members from 42 different countries.
Our headquarters are in The Hague in the Netherlands. But we haven’t always been based here. Back in 1993, when we were the Europol Drugs Unit, we were actually housed in makeshift containers in Strasbourg, France. We moved to more watertight premises in 1994 – an old Catholic boys’ school. With rising staff numbers, we soon outgrew that building and so have been operating out of our purpose-built headquarters since 2013.
The international criminal landscape has changed dramatically over the past 20 years and so have our offices. We now have representations in Brussels, Lyon, Singapore and Washington DC with one or two Europol staff members stationed there.
Europol deals with crimes that threaten EU citizens and the common interests of the EU; this includes serious and organised crime and terrorism. In a nutshell, we make Europe safer. A simple concept, but actually challenging in practice.
If a crime affects two or more Member States, we can assist law enforcement in joining the dots and help investigators in their work. The EU has 27 Member States, but each Member State has a number of law enforcement authorities (in the EU alone there are around 90 separate authorities). Europol brings them together to fight crime as one. This makes Europol the EU hub for criminal intelligence.
While the names may sound similar, Europol and INTERPOL are different, separate organisations.
Europol sets up and coordinates cross-border operations against the most dangerous criminal groups in the EU. We facilitate direct communication between investigators from national law enforcement authorities. Europol analysts and experts support investigators in real-time and often on-the-spot while taking an active part in complex operations. In other words, we make cross-border investigations more efficient.
INTERPOL is a global organisation, which helps law enforcement authorities across the world to improve their capacities by the exchange of information and best practices. INTERPOL is also known for its red notices (a wanted fugitive is on the run) and yellow notices (alert for a missing person).
That doesn’t mean we don’t work together – we collaborate on different operations and host an annual joint cybercrime conference.
Sorry to shatter the illusion, but it’s not like in the movies. Europol staff members do not have the power to arrest suspected criminals. Instead, our analysts provide valuable information to national authorities, so they can shut down criminal groups, identify perpetrators and arrest them.
While having no powers of arrest, we are active in on the ground, so you may see Europol staff members with police when they knock on your door at 5 o’clock in the morning!
Our experts are often deployed on-the-spot to perform checks and speed up operations with real-time data analysis. Our analysts facilitate the exchange of information between investigators in different countries. This is how information on suspects can cross borders even faster than the criminals themselves.
No, Europol staff members do not wear a uniform. But we may wear a jacket with the Europol logo to distinguish ourselves from Member State law enforcement when in the field. If you pay a visit to our headquarters, you can also see our security officers in uniforms and bulletproof vests.
No! If you get a call from someone claiming to work at Europol (and asking you to pay a fine or give personal details), it is a scam.
Unfortunately, these scams are all too common, so we’ve listed some tips on how to protect yourself from these vicious cyber fraudsters.
No. Europol provides technical tools and capabilities to national authorities to exchange personal data of suspected criminals securely. However, the national authority sharing this data with Europol and other national authorities remains the owner. This data exchange allows the detection and identification of criminals operating across EU borders.
As you may already suspect, the most dangerous crimes are of particular interest to us. We have made a list of ten crime areas to focus our efforts on - we call these our ‘priority crime areas’.
But how do we choose ten crime areas? We listen to what EU Member States want and need and analyse crime trends in the EU. It usually consists of crimes that require an international approach and cooperation between several countries, inside and outside the EU. These ten crime priorities shape how we work for the following four years. We call this EMPACT.
For 2018 - 2021, our ten crime priorities areas are:
No. Europol staff members do not carry firearms. Intelligence is our weapon.
Even when Europol staff members are deployed to operations on the ground they are unarmed. Instead, we carry laptops and other fancy electronic devices linked to databases with millions of criminal data entries. Since 2010, we’ve used these devices 1 527 times.
Europol’s Secure Information Exchange Network Application (SIENA) is used to quickly exchange operational and strategic crime-related data in a secure way. Over one million SIENA messages were sent between Europol and Member States in 2017 alone.
Europol Information System (EIS) is used to store and query information about offences, offenders, suspects and other key crime-related data. In 2010, there were 147 345 EIS searches. In 2018, that number stands at over 4 million. In the same year, there were 213 023 persons and 1.3 million objects entered into the EIS. That’s a 600% and 750% increase respectively since 2010.
Safe to say we are kept quite busy!
Our experts can support EU Member States and third parties in the field on their request. We help investigators connect and use information stored in our databases. We can provide expertise and tools which may not be otherwise available.
Forensic examination, for example, is one way we can help investigations. We have forensic labs in our headquarters, but we can also deploy drug labs for forensic analysis to support drug trafficking investigations. We did this 15 times in 2018.
We can also help recover and analyse operational information extracted from digital devices, computers and digitally stored media. Our mobile device extraction kits were used 155 times in 2018. This is complemented by our in-house cyber forensic tools, housed in Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).
Our experts are also active in migrant smuggling investigations. Experts frequently visit migration hotspots. In 2015 and 2016, Europol counter terrorism experts were deployed to identify movements of suspected terrorists through these hotspots. If you add up all the hours we spent working in these hotspots in 2018, it would be 1 551 working days!
Europol is also asked to support special international events, such as G7 meetings or the UEFA Euro football tournament. These on-the-ground operations are supported by our 24/7 Operational Centre back in The Hague.
We work with Member States to support investigators from national authorities. Europol does not investigate crimes alone. If a serial killer committed a series of murders across Europe, Europol could help the countries concerned, if we were requested to do so.
Thinking of 007? Think again. Agent 007 works for the intelligence services and we are law enforcement. In fact, we have hundreds of law enforcement officers in the building. More than 250 of them are here as liaison officers – that means they have an office in our building, but work for their respective national authorities. They come from police, gendarmerie, customs and other authorities. Working in such close quarters has revolutionised police work - a Greek officer only needs to cross the corridor to talk to their Irish counterpart.
We are also a team of analysts and specialists. Europol analysts evaluate operational data and cross-check data provided from operations against Europol databases. This helps investigators discover the international connections of criminal groups and dangerous perpetrators.
Specialists combat different forms of crime by helping partners better respond to current and future criminal threats. They analyse criminal trends, coordinate cross-border investigations, provide training to officers working on the field, forensic expertise and so on.