Page contentsPage contents The Commission and EU agencies provide a range of tools to support the exchange of information between national law enforcement authorities. These tools ensure timely access to accurate and up-to-date information, enabling effective prevention, detection, and investigation of criminal activity. Legal framework On 1 April 2025, the Commission presented ProtectEU – the European Internal Security Strategy, which sets out the objectives and actions for the next years to ensure a safer and more secure Europe. 2020 - 2025 Security Union Strategy Following the Security Union Strategy adopted in July 2020, the Commission has proposed to strengthen Europol’s mandate to allow the Agency to better support national law enforcement authorities with information, analysis and expertise. In June 2022, the revised Europol Regulation entered into force. On 8 December 2021, the Commission proposed an EU Police Cooperation package to enhance operational law enforcement cooperation across Member States and give EU police officers more modern tools for information exchange and operational cooperation.Information exchange: a proposal for a Directive on information exchange between law enforcement authorities of Member States, and a proposal for a Regulation on automated data exchange mechanism for police cooperation (“Prüm II”)Operational law enforcement cooperation: a proposal for a Council Recommendation on operational police cooperation2015 - 2020 European agenda on security With the European agenda on security, the Commission identified areas where further efforts are required. 2010 - 2015 Stockholm programme The Stockholm programme highlighted the need to further develop law enforcement cooperation instruments in the EU. 2005 - 2010 Hague programme The Hague programme introduced the principle of availability as the guiding concept for law enforcement information exchange: across the EU, information available to one EU Member State’s law enforcement authorities needs to be made accessible to all EU Member States’ law enforcement forces. Police information sharing instruments Schengen Information System (SIS) The Schengen Information System (SIS) is the largest information sharing system for security and border management in Europe, providing information on wanted or missing persons. Thanks to SIS, competent national authorities, such as police and border guards, can enter and consult alerts on wanted people and objects in one common European database. These people and objects can then be located anywhere within the EU and the Schengen area during police, border or other lawful checks. In March 2023, SIS was further enhanced to include new categories of alerts, upgraded data, including biometrics such as palmprints, fingerprints, and DNA records to link with missing persons’ alerts, and additional tools to combat international crime and terrorism. The Prüm II framework The Prüm II Regulation on the automated search and exchange of data for police cooperation aims to close information gaps and boost prevention, detection, and investigation of criminal offences in the EU. Building on the 2008 Prüm framework, new rules improve, facilitate, and accelerate data search and exchange by: Preserving the existing automated exchange of DNA profiles, dactyloscopic data (fingerprint), and vehicle registration data.Allowing searches of vehicle registration data using the identity data of criminals.Starting automated data exchanges of facial images and police records.Establishing a central router to simplify the automated exchanges of biometric data (DNA profiles, dactyloscopic data and facial images).Establishing the European Police Records Index System (EPRIS) to allow for automated exchange of police records.Ensuring that, after a confirmed match on biometric data, there is a follow up within 48 hours via the exchange of core identification data.Including Europol to the Prüm framework: allowing Europol to query national databases with data provided by non-EU countries and allowing Member States to query biometric data provided by non-EU countries to Europol.Enabling automated searches to identify human remains for criminal investigations, and enabling automated searches of missing persons for criminal investigations or humanitarian reasons.Aligning exchanges under the Prüm framework to the data protection framework with strong safeguards. DNA profiles, dactyloscopic data (fingerprints) or facial images taken from a crime scene in one EU countrycan be compared in an automated manner with profiles held in other EU country’s databases via an indirect access (match/no match basis). If there is a potential match, the information is returned to the requesting EU country. A forensic expert of the requesting EU country conducts a manual review to confirm the match. If a match is confirmed, the requesting EU country will receive core identification data (data related to the data subject and to the criminal offence) from the requested EU country. The biometric data will be exchanged through the central router, which will act as a connecting point between national biometric databases. Police records will be exchanged through the European Police Records Information System (EPRIS), which acts as a central router between national police records indexes. Vehicle registration data, including licence plates and vehicle identification number , are exchanged from national vehicle registration databases that are connected to the online portal EUCARIS. Directive (EU) 2023/977 on the exchange of information between the law enforcement authorities of EU countries The Directive aims to simplify the exchange of information and intelligence. The Directive requires each country to establish or designate a Single Point of Contact point responsible for coordinating and facilitating the exchange of information under this Directive. It establishes common rules for information exchange between law enforcement authorities, ensuring that the Single Points of Contacts are equipped with management tools for exchanging information. It also ensures that Europol’s secure channel of communication SIENA (the Secure Information Exchange Network Application) is used by default when exchanging information with other Member States. SIENA allows European competent authorities to exchange information in a swift, secure, and user-friendly way, with each other, Europol, and a number of third-country partners.
