The decision to establish a European Police Office (Europol) was taken by the European Council at its meeting in Maastricht on 9 and 10 December 1991 on the basis of a report submitted to the Council by TREVI Ministers. The European Council also decided that Europol's initial function will be to organise the exchange of information on drugs among the Community's 12 member states. The establishment of Europol is, of course, also envisaged by the Treaty on European Union. The Treaty and the Declaration on Police Co-operation it contains will provide the framework for the development on Europol in the years ahead.
At their Maastricht meeting the European Council instructed TREVI Ministers, in collaboration with the European Commission, to take the necessary steps to allow Europol to be set up at an early date. The detailed work necessary to achieve that objective is now proceeding within the TREVI framework. Both my Department and the Garda Síochána are participating fully in that work, as they did in the preparation of the report on which the decision to establish Europol was based. It is also my intention that Ireland will participate fully in Europol once it has been established.
Europol represent only one of a number of compensatory measures which are being considered at the level of the Twelve in the context of the creation of a Europe without internal frontiers. It has been recognised for some time now that international terrorism and organised crime will seek to exploit the opportunities offered by greater freedom of movement for ends inimical to the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Community at large. The Twelve have responded to that challenge by seeking to promote closer co-operation among their police forces within the TREVI framework. The programme of action on the re-inforcement of police co-operation to combat terrorism and other forms of organised crime, adopted by TREVI Ministers in Dublin in June 1990 during the Irish Presidency, has provided the framework in which a number of practical measures designed to reinforce and build on existing co-operation among the police forces of the Twelve have been agreed in the run up to the creation of the Single Market. Those measures include a number specifically directed at combatting terrorism. Compensatory measures of this kind are, of course, an integral part of the free movement issue.
The co-operation that is already taking place within the TREVI frame work will now be largely superseded by the new arrangements for co-operation in the field of justice and home affairs provided for in the Treaty on European Union. I am confident that, when adopted, the new framework for such co-operation which the Treaty provides will allow the development of even closer co-operation among the police forces of the Twelve in meeting the challenges which terrorism and organised crime pose for the Community as a whole.