THE trap was set. Undercover Belgian police were about to spring it. Then one officer noticed a car with Italian plates. The drug bust could wait a few minutes while he satisfied his curiosity.
He called up headquarters. They checked the national database. Nothing Then headquarters rang the Belgian liaison officer at Europol in The Hague. Within minutes, the officer's colleague from the German police told him the car had Mafia connections with rackets in Germany. They were interested in its movements.
The bust was postponed and the EU's embryonic police intelligence unit set about organising a covert monitoring operation that would cover several countries and provide intelligence on a major drugs network.
Last summer, police forces in five countries, including Ireland, set up a "controlled delivery" involving surveillance in Ireland, Britain, France and Spain that was to net two tonnes of cannabis and 10 arrests. Europol, involved in several hundred seizures last year, again provided co-ordination.
Yesterday, the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, went on a fact finding mission to the organisation's headquarters. She paid tribute to Europol's work, adding that she would be "very disturbed" by further delay in the ratification of the Europol Convention. This is the shadow hanging over the EU's embryonic police centre.
Europol today is a legal nonentity, an informal system of cooperation between member states, whose work has been hamstrung for over a year by Britain's refusal to agree to a role for the European Court of Justice in the interpretation of the blocked convention. Hopes of British cooperation were dashed last week by Mr Major's pledge to disrupt EU business.
As a result, one of Mrs Owen's first challenges as president of the Council of Justice Ministers will be to see the convention ratified. Until then, the organisation may not pool personal data on suspected criminals or set up formal legal relationships with third countries seen as a key to the fight against drugs supplied from the former Eastern bloc countries.
Mrs Owen, who met the two gardai working in the organisation, Inspectors Noel Keane and Frank Martin, was briefed by the German co-ordinator of the Europol Drugs Unit, Mr Jorgen Storbeck.
Demand for Europol's assistance has rapidly increased since it was set up in January, 1994. Last year, about 1,500 requests for information were processed, up from 300 in its first year. Its role is strictly confined to passing information between police forces and analysing it.
Europol's novelty lies not in police forces trading information they have always done so bilaterally but most unsystematically but in the structures put in place to do so. National liaison officers provide the key links from The Hague to national headquarters allowing information to be sought in the language of each country and speeding cooperation.
Requests to Interpol could lake weeks to process while Europol boasts it can get results in less than an hour. Three quarters of the centre's work focuses on drugs trafficking, a further 19 to 12 per cent on money laundering, with the balance of its energies devoted to stolen car smuggling and the trafficking in people.
It also monitors the illegal trade in nuclear materials from eastern Europe and, once the convention is approved, will have a role in the fight against terrorism.
Big brother? Mr Storbeck denies it, pointing to the convention's plan for an international data protection commission which will closely monitor Europol's work and must vet all requests to use personal data for analysis. In addition, member states which do not meet high data protection standards will not be given access to the system. Italy and Greece fail to do so.
And what happens when the convention is approved? Will Europol be able to cope with the challenges it faces? Its staff of 98 includes four analysts. The three US organisations which perform a similar role have between them 700 staff, of which 300 are analysts.
Senior Europol sources worry that funds will not match the political commitment to the organisation. Budget increases of 1 to 2 per cent are being discussed. What is needed, they say, is money of a different magnitude.
