EU Parliament supports automated data exchange for police cooperation, despite concerns

The European Parliament adopted on Thursday (8 February) its position on the controversial Prüm II regulation, a Commission proposal for automated data exchange for police cooperation, despite concerns by the EESC, political parties, and civil society organisations. 

With 451 votes in favour, 94 against and 10 abstentions, the EU Parliament, Prüm II will now progress to inter-institutional negotiations, known as trilogues, with the Council representing the 27 EU member states.

Prüm II allows for automated data exchange for police cooperation and was proposed by the EU Commission in December 2021 under the legislative package on the EU Police Cooperation Code to address issues related to police cooperation concerning criminal investigations.

“To me, it’s clear organised crime is as big a threat to society as terrorism. We have to counter this threat with all the means at our disposal,” Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said in the plenary session.

The Prüm reform adds additional categories to the data exchange, including facial images of suspects and convicted criminals and police records. Data gathering is, however, only allowed for crime prevention, detection, or investigation.

To speed up data access for cross-border cases under criminal investigation, two central routers, the Prüm II router and the European Police Records Index System (EPRIS), are to be established. Prüm II would also allow Europol access to databases held by EU countries and vice versa to check third-country-sourced biometric data automatically.

“We will be given national law enforcement bodies the possibility to know in a more efficient and faster manner if other Member States or Europol hold data which are linked to an ongoing criminal investigation,” the EPP-rapporteur Paulo Rangel, who spearheaded the legislative file, said during the plenary debate.

The reform is a proposed update to the Prüm Framework, which came to live in 2005 and has allowed for the automated exchange of data, fingerprints, and vehicle registration data since 2008.

“With this reform, we see data being compared, and it’s no longer done bilaterally. It’s now done via a semi-automatic system,” Rangel added.

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Prüm II concerns

The Economic and Social Committee (EESC), acting in an advisory capacity to the EU institutions, expressed concerns about the danger of influencing digital data exchange related to building technical installations for facial profiling.

Euractiv learnt that EESC has not changed its concerns, which were first published in 2022.

Also, the Greens and the Pirates are concerned about the Prüm reform, with civil society organisations pointing out insufficient safeguards.

“Not only do we increase police powers across Europe and reduce the control we have over our own data, but we also decrease the level of scrutiny citizens have of law enforcement and of creeping police surveillance,” MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfiled from the Greens/European Free Alliance said during the debate.

EDRi, the EU network defending rights and freedoms online, considers Prüm II insufficient to protect fundamental rights by prioritising national security. EDRi pointed out in its statement from Wednesday that the scope of automated data exchange raises concerns about the necessity and proportionality.

For civil society, the low threshold for crimes and including facial images are particularly concerning.

According to an investigation, only Ireland, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Malta, and Bulgaria had no plans to implement facial recognition by 2023.

EDRi fears this could change with Prüm II as the reform might encourage more member states to adopt facial recognition technology.

[Edited by Alice Taylor]

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