“In 2015 Europol’s Finance Unit will continue supporting and monitoring the implementation of the budget, with the aim of confirming the achievements of 2014 in terms of commitment (99.7%) and payment (93%) rates. The Human Resources (HR) Unit will work on consolidating the new EU Staff Regulations in sensitive areas such as staff assessments and reclassification.
New investments are foreseen by the Administration Business Area to develop support systems, namely facilities management and HR systems, in order to partially mitigate the decrease of staff in support functions. The ICT Business Area will continue providing a reliable operational IT environment while ensuring the evolution of core systems.
2015 will be also a pivotal year in which many initiatives in the 2010-2014 strategy roadmap, such as the Europol Analysis System (EAS), network transformation and ICT security improvements, will come to fruition. New initiatives, such as FIU.net1 will be introduced. An updated EMAS version with a portal for Member States and a Mobile Malware Analysis Solution will be launched in 2015.
“2015 will be a year of transition for Europol, in which the agency’s development according to the current strategy will be completed, giving way to a new phase of the organisation’s growth facilitated by an expected new legal framework.
Apart from providing continuous support to the organisation, in particular the operational department in the delivery of core business products and services, Europol’s Governance Department will start working on the assessment of the impact and changes stemming from the Europol Regulation.
A main focus will be on the preparation of a proposal on the new Europol Strategy for the years to come. Cooperation with relevant third countries and other EU agencies and bodies will remain a priority in 2015 as well as the implementation of the Delegation agreement to support Member States in the achievement of EMPACT priorities.
Following the assessments of current security threats, the Governance Department will continue addressing them via the further improvement of security arrangements in place.”
“The need and request of Member States for Europol support and more specifically by the Operations Department is strongly increasing. The trend of increasing contributions to our databases, the amount of operational reports, expertise and intelligence notifications, and on-the-spot support, will probably keep growing over the year, as was the case in 2014.
For the first time the Operations Department will support the Operational Action Plans of the Member States, with grants coming out of the Delegation Agreement, and will coordinate even more operational actions under the EMPACT priorities. The call for operational preparation and analysis of possible investigations will be supported through evaluation and new initiatives, such as the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT) and Joint Operational Team Mare (JOT Mare), but probably also with similar activities in the area of foreign fighters.
An interim SOCTA report and a report on the future of organised crime will be published alongside other regular products, such as Cyberbits and the iOCTA. Cooperation with other relevant third parties like Interpol, Frontex and Eurojust among others will be intensified at the operational level.
The growing digital world will require even more support by EC3, both to Member States but also in working with private partners, such as the financial institutions and the IT industry, to attack digital crime.
Europol’s Operations Department will also face a new challenge by recruiting new staff and seconded national experts to improve the support that can be provided to Member States. We will do our utmost to support Member States in making Europe safer.”