What is Europol and why has it activated security alerts for the Ukrainian refugee crisis?

The migratory exodus that has triggered the invasion of Russia to Ukraine It has not only generated a humanitarian crisis in which more than 4 million Ukrainians have had to leave their country, but also a security crisis. Given this, Europol reported that it has deployed operations in all member countries of the European Union (EU) that share borders with Ukraine.

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Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova already have European police personnel in charge of “support national authorities with secondary security checks and investigations at the European external borders to identify criminals and terrorists trying to enter the EU in the flow of refugees and exploit the situation”, according to Europol itself.

Hungary expects a similar deployment next. In all these cases, it should be noted, the support of the European police was given after a request from the governments of the countries mentioned.

The work of Europol, moreover, is accompanied by a collection of information that allows them to “anticipate events and coordinate operational activities with EU Member States to respond to the activities of criminal groups seeking to profit from the war in Ukraine”.

But what is Europol and how have previous migration crises taught them about the potential risks in these emergencies?

EUROPEAN POLICE

The European Union Law Enforcement Organization (Europol) was planned as early as 1992, in the Maastricht Treaty, but only began operating two years later as the Europol Drugs Unit.

In 1995 it began to expand its powers and since 2002 it covers the fields of drug trafficking, radioactive material trafficking, illegal migration routes, human trafficking, vehicle trafficking, money laundering, serious international crimes, pedophilia and terrorism, according to information from the same agency.

With its headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands, Europol represents the police forces of the 27 members of the European Union. His work could be defined as that of the node of all the police agencies of the block.

In other words, Europol does not actually have agents on the ground, but rather is responsible for facilitating coordination between the police of each country. The nations, for their part, dedicate an exclusive police office to coordinate with the continental organization and have a representation in Europol.

In that sense, we could say that Europol’s most powerful weapon is the information it has. The police databases of the 27 countries concentrated in the same brain allow a faster and more coordinated response that is executed by local forces.

In addition to this, Europol also collaborates with other associated states and international organisations.

Europol headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. (Eva Plevier / Reuters /)

SECURITY CRISIS

As we mentioned a few lines ago, humanitarian crises such as those in the Ukraine or the Mediterranean are taken advantage of by criminal organizations to perpetrate crimes such as human trafficking or the infiltration of elements that could later commit attacks in the host countries.

To exemplify the work of Europol in these scenarios, let’s go back to 2015. That year was marked by the massive arrival of refugees from the Middle East to the Old Continent.

At least one million people fled the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq to Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea or following the route from Turkey to the Greek islands in search of refuge.

90% of them managed to get there after paying human traffickers. These criminal networks pocketed between 3 and 6 billion euros that year under this modality, according to an article in the Spanish newspaper “El País”.

In response to this, Europol announced the launch of a new Center against Migrant Smuggling. That same year, the European police managed to identify 30,000 suspected human traffickers.

By 2016 the figure was around 55,000 suspects, a year later 10,000 more names were added and by 2018 there was a record of 65,000 human traffickers, according to Europol.

But 2015 was not only the year of the migration crisis, but also the year of the terrorist attacks in Europe.

Both phenomena were related by a large part of the population and taken advantage of by extreme right-wing radical groups to condemn the European opening towards the reception of migrants. However, in its annual report presented in 2016, Europol points out that “there is no concrete evidence that terrorists systematically use the flow of migrants to Europe to go unnoticed”.

“However, in some incidents terrorists have been identified who took advantage of the migratory flow to enter the EU. In the investigations of the attacks in Paris on November 13 (2015), it was found that two of the attackers had entered the EU through Greece as part of the group of refugees from Syria”, complements the report.

On the other hand, the European police warned that an imminent risk was the possibility that the refugees become vulnerable to groups that radicalize them within the same host country or are recruited by extremists.

The response of the European police was the creation of the European Counterterrorism Center (ECTC, for its acronym in English) in January 2016. This new office is not only responsible for facilitating the exchange of information between member countries but also monitors networks social networks for alerts on radical groups within the EU.

In addition, the ECTC contemplates the deployment of officers in “hot spots” of migration, which will be precisely what they will do now in Ukraine.

Source: Elcomercio