Europol's exchange of personal data: beyond supervision?

‘Who polices the police?’ It is the simple question the research intends to answer. The European Police Office (Europol) is the organ competent for police cooperation within the EU and as such represents the ‘police of the EU’. Since its establishment, in the 1990s, it developed and established itself as the EU criminal information hub and thus plays a key role in the information-sharing occurring within the EU as well as outside of it. However, as the European Council pointed out already in 2004, during the Hague programme, enhanced exchange of law-enforcement information shall be followed by the development of efficient supervisory mechanism permitting the respect for data protection (DP). It is that concept of ‘supervision’ that shall constitute the other police and the ‘watchdog’ of Europol. The thesis intends to analyse the supervisory mechanisms to which Europol's exchange of personal data is subject to, in combining theoretical and empirical research. The objective is to choose three case-studies in order to do so: an operational agreement with a third country; the 'hotspot' approach and finally the Schengen Information system.