EUROPOL 2.0

As Europol approaches its upcoming mandate renewal - scheduled for legislative review in Q2 2026 - the expectations are unequivocal: the agency must scale up its operational and tactical capacity to match the growing complexity and urgency of Europe’s security challenges. It is all the more crucial as some national police forces face structural constraints: chronic underfunding, shortages of qualified staff, or limited capacity to sustain complex, largescale investigations. In such situations, Europol’s reinforced analytical, operational, and technological capabilities serve not only to support national authorities facing structural constraints, but also to complement and strengthen the work of even the best-resourced services, ensuring that serious crime is confronted consistently across the Union.

The Commission has signalled its intention to significantly expand Europol’s capabilities and workforce while reinforcing oversight and mandate. This commitment comes at a time when the very nature of crime has transformed. Crime scenes are no longer confined to physical jurisdictions; they now operate through interconnected digital pathways. Actors coordinate across borders they physically cross, targets are reachable instantly from anywhere, tools are commercially available as illicit services, and evidence has become volatile, encrypted, and dispersed.

In this environment, success hinges not only on individual sovereignty but on enabling a strong culture of, cooperation, partnerships, and rapidly adaptable technological toolkits. Europol’s future does not lie in risk-averse strategies, but in concentrating and rematerialising fragmented intelligence into actionable and operational outcomes - built on stateof the-art technology, information, support and cooperation, matched with resources commensurate to the ambition.

The expansion of Europol’s mandate should be accompanied by a strengthening of Eurojust’s role. Reinforcing the EU’s police capacities must go hand in hand with a corresponding reinforcement of its judicial tool.