Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs
The Chair
To the Chairperson(s) of the committee(s) concerned
Honourable Chairperson,
On 11 May 2016, the new Europol Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/794) entered
into force. In this Regulation, a Joint Parliamentary Scrutiny Group (JPSG) has been
established to enable national Parliaments and the European Parliament, pursuant to
Article 88 of the TFEU, to politically scrutinize Europol's activities. The Europol
Regulation states that “the organisation and the rules of procedure of the JPSG shall
be determined together by the European Parliament and the national parliaments in
accordance with Article 9 of Protocol No 1”.
In order for this new scrutiny body to be ready by the date of application of this new
Europol Regulation (1 May 2017), the Conference of Speakers of the EU Parliaments
in May 2016 agreed a step by step approach to define the modalities of the JPSG,
which included an interparliamentary meeting to be organised by the LIBE committee
at the European Parliament in autumn 2016.
Against this background, the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs
would like to invite Members of national Parliaments to an inter-parliamentary
meeting on "Europol and its parliamentary scrutiny in the framework of EU Internal
Security policies". The meeting is scheduled for Monday 28 November 2016 from
15h00 to 18h30 in the European Parliament in Brussels.
I am therefore pleased to invite up to four Members of the relevant committee(s) from
each national Parliament (two from each Chamber in the case of bi-cameral
Parliaments) to attend this meeting.
Should you be unable to attend, I would welcome any written contribution which
would be distributed to our respective Members and other participants.
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