EU wants Europol HQ to set sights on terrorism fight

A growing number of European Parliamentarians want to focus the Europol headquarters in The Hague by turning it into a European FBI. According to them, despite mountains of anti-terrorism measures taken since 9/11, things still go wrong in Europe because the security forces continue to refuse to share information, AD reports. In a terrorism debate, held three weeks after the attacks in Brussels, almost the entire Parliament concluded that in every European terrorist attack in recent years, the perpetrators were known suspects in other countries. That's why former Belgian Prime Minsiter Guy Verhofstadt is proposing that Europe gets its own FBI - to make sure that terrorist suspect in country X does not travel to country Y and blow up a group of people there. Verhofstad believes that turning Europol into a European FBI will be relatively easy to arrange. New rules to add an anti-terrorist unit to the service this year are already on the table. He has three more suggestions for the service. Firstly make it responsible for European intelligence. Give it the power to start its own investigations and compel national authorities to cooperate. And forbid national Europol cells from filtering information to headquarters.