How Brexit Has Put Citizen Safety in Play
22 February 2018 - 8:12PM
Dow Jones News
By Stephen Fidler
British Prime Minister Theresa May has long said she wants
Britain to have a "bespoke" agreement with the European Union after
Brexit.
One area where she has the best hope of getting a tailor-made
deal is over law enforcement and counterterrorism.
In a speech in Munich over the weekend, she laid out her case
for a very close British relationship in internal security matters
with the EU that no other non-EU country enjoys. If that doesn't
happen, she suggested, both sides will be losers.
National cooperation among EU countries has intensified over the
past 20 years. EU nations share unprecedented amounts of
information through six databases covering criminal records,
vehicle registration, DNA, passenger-name records and much
else.
They have developed Europol, which runs a database and
coordinates EU-wide operations dealing with serious crime and
terrorism. They have launched programs such as the European Arrest
Warrant, which speeds extradition within the EU, and the European
Investigation Order that expedites cross-border sharing of
information from criminal inquiries.
For the U.K., losing access to all this and other programs could
have important consequences. In Europol, for example, EU member
states -- except for Denmark, which opted out -- can directly
access Europol's database. Non-EU countries, even those with strong
ties to Europol such as the U.S., must specifically request
information.
Leaving Europol, said Rob Wainwright, the British director of
Europol, would result in a strategic loss because the U.K. would no
longer be sitting at the decision makers' table. It would mean "a
loss of visibility and instantaneous access" to the Europol
database, he said in an interview in January.
A British government paper published in September pointed out
that "real-time or very rapid responses" to database requests "make
a significant difference to the value of the information to
operational partners."
The European Arrest Warrant speeds extradition based on mutual
recognition of judicial procedures in other member states, avoiding
lengthy litigation. If the U.K. isn't part of that program, without
it the U.K. would likely have to revert to a 1957 convention where
applications are made through diplomatic channels and can be
refused.
Each warrant is also transmitted as an alert through the largest
security database in Europe: the Schengen Information System, of
which the U.K. is part even though it is outside the Schengen
passport-free travel zone. That means an extradition request
doesn't have to be targeted at a specific country.
Mrs. May laid out why the EU might be interested in a special
deal on security. She pointed out that for every person arrested on
a European Arrest Warrant issued by the U.K., the U.K. arrests
eight on warrants issued by other EU member states. Extradition
otherwise could cost four times as much and take three times as
long, she said.
The U.K. is one of the largest contributors of data, information
and expertise to Europol. On the Schengen Information System,
around a fifth of alerts related to missing persons, wanted
criminals and suspected terrorists and the like are circulated by
the U.K.
The prime minister made clear that the U.K. wants to be part of
these structures, but typically didn't make clear how.
She said that when participating in EU agencies, the U.K. would
respect "the remit of the European Court of Justice" -- a stance
that could ease the way to close cooperation. But she added
Britain's "unique status as a third country with our own sovereign
legal order" would also need to be respected, which would
complicate it by implying Britain's legal system could impinge on
EU affairs.
No non-EU members have the kind of relationship that Mrs. May
seems to be floating -- except in some special circumstances where
non-EU members of the Schengen travel area, like Switzerland and
Norway, are included. None has a seat at the decision-making
table.
Sorting this out will require delving into huge amounts of
detail. But Mrs. May's appeal puts the EU in a quandary. It has so
far rejected the idea that the U.K. can "cherry pick" the bits of
the EU it likes and ignore those it doesn't.
However, there is risk for EU governments in pushing Britain
away from the EU in security matters that they don't run in trade
and economic affairs: It could make their citizens less safe.
What if delayed exchanges of information allowed a deadly
terrorist attack that would have been stopped if Britain had been
inside the tent? Shouldn't citizen safety trump a theology that
dictates the U.K. should have a less-attractive deal outside the EU
than inside?
Yet if EU governments do allow cherry picking in law enforcement
and counterterrorism, they risk creating a precedent for the
bespoke deal on post-Brexit trade and economic relations that Mrs.
May also says she wants and which up until now they have forcefully
rejected.
Write to Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 22, 2018 14:57 ET (19:57 GMT)
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