#Europol: ALDE MEPs advocate for upgraded Europol to give it intelligence capacity

During today's debate on anti-terrorism measures, ALDE leader Guy Verhofstadt announced that the European Liberals and Democrats will table amendments to re-open the negotiations on the Europol Regulation in order to upgrade Europol and give it the necessary tools to fight terrorism. ALDE believes that the time of solemn declarations is over, it is time for action.

Verhofstadt said: "After every terrorist attack, I hear the same mantra: 'we need more coordination, we need better coordination.' How many people more have to die before we recognize the fact that 'coordination' in Europe is simply not good enough?"

"To protect our citizens, we need capacities at a European level. A capacity for gathering and analyzing intelligence, for investigating these type of crimes. We need to give Europol the power it needs. The US already did this more than a hundred years ago by creating the FBI; it is time that we also face reality. We need a European capacity to fight this evil."

ALDE Vice-President Sophie in 't Veld added:  "The war on terror has failed. After fifteen years of passing new measures after each attack, we need to recognize the problem got bigger, not smaller. We need to rethink our strategies and come up with measures that work.

Focus on sharing of information, invest in human intelligence, step up prevention programmes, rather than setting up megalomaniac IT systems that do not bring more information sharing.

We do not need more dots, we need more connecting the dots."

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