About us Our work Articles Research Documents Events Search Donate Back to articles News New Europol proposal pushes for deregulation and more AI in policing Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos participates at Europol-Interpol Operational Forum. Image: Dimitris Avramopoulos, CC BY-SA 2.0 Under a new proposal, Europol is set to receive unprecedented access to personal data related to current and potential cross-border investigations. It’s part of a wider plan to expand the use of AI in policing. Date 21 September 2026 Author Romain Lanneau Topics Discrimination and racism Snooping and surveillance Region European Union (EU) Share LinkedIn Mastodon Bluesky Email Copy link Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos participates at Europol-Interpol Operational Forum. Image: Dimitris Avramopoulos, CC BY-SA 2.0 Under a new proposal, Europol is set to receive unprecedented access to personal data related to current and potential cross-border investigations. It’s part of a wider plan to expand the use of AI in policing. Table of contents The regulation, proposed on 24 June 2026, would permit Europol to evade procedural safeguards, such as ensuring data stored on people is limited and proportionate to their involvement in a crime. These safeguards are described in the proposal as “administrative burdens”. The plans would also hasten the expansion of data collection by police authorities in Europe as well as their use of experimental AI systems.
Europol is not currently allowed to search for and store personal data without, according to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), “indications” that the data is relevant.1 But in May 2026, former Europol officials revealed to investigative journalists that the agency has been running “shadow systems” for years. These parallel systems sit outside the agency’s mainframe, allowing them to avoid data protection and IT design requirements. An ongoing complaint by the strategic litigation NGO Front-LEX seeks to force the EDPS, Europol’s supervisory authority, to ban such “shadow systems”.
The Commission describes its plans for deregulation as necessary in order to keep pace with technological change, “modernise” Europol’s work and make the agency the EU’s leader in AI-driven policing.
Since late 2024, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has launched several legislative “simplification” packages. These include the AI omnibus adopted in June and the digital omnibus proposed in November 2025, which are designed to allow the Commission to weaken minimum standards and protections across a range of social, digital and environmental legislation. The Europol proposal is just one of the latest attempts to weaken privacy and data protection safeguards.
The plans would also expand Europol’s role in dealing with the private sector. The agency would become the central “hub” for private actors to share information and receive funding for digital policing tools development. Such tools include tech for subverting encryption, for instance, or for scaling up automated profiling.
This article was aggregated automatically by CyberWire Daily's newsfeed engine. Original reporting: statewatch.org.
