Europol chief rows back on Brexit ‘Project Fear’ warnings

Those who acted as the biggest cheerleaders for Project Fear in the run-up to the referendum now have the awkward task of changing tack. One of those shouting loudly was Rob Wainwright, the British head of Europol. A key campaign strategy of David Cameron was that Britain would be safer in the European Union – and, ergo, less safe outside of it. Joining him in those warnings was Wainwright, who said that if the UK was no longer a member of the EU, Britain would become a ‘second-tier member’ of the crime-fighting club. He said, in the event of Brexit, that:

‘It would make it harder for Britain to fight terrorism and crime.’

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This morning, he’s been striking a somewhat different note. He told the Today programme:

‘We’re dealing very much with a globalised problem that requires close co-operation with our European neighbours, particularly in information sharing. That’s going to continue of course, even after the UK leaves the EU.’

In the lead-up to the referendum, Wainwright also suggested that Britain would lose access to crime-fighting databases. Today, that warning was rephrased. He said Britain could (based on an unknown legal precedent) lose access to ‘some’ parts of that system but that it depended on the terms of the country’s negotiation deal with the EU. Finally, he also said that given Theresa May was PM he was ‘confident’ we could get a beneficial security deal for both the UK and the EU. Confidence he didn’t seem to have a few weeks ago.

There is, of course, a long list of countries from outside the EU, including the likes of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, who do at the moment. Whilst further afield, Australia, Canada and the Colombia enjoy an ‘operational agreement’ with Europol. All of this was obvious before the referendum and we can now, hopefully, get back to talking about how Britain will choose to operate with Europol. The referendum was not whether Britain cooperates with Europe but how Britain cooperates wih Europe. It’s good to see that Europol now feels able to grasp this point.