Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have called for the expansion of Europol to be paused following disclosures that the police organisation ran a shadow IT system containing vast amounts of data without adequate security or data protection measures in place.
An investigation by Computer Weekly, Correctiv and Solomon revealed that Europol stored petabytes of crime-related data on a network that operated for years without scrutiny from regulators, despite significant privacy and security flaws.
Europol’s “shadow” databases were used to analyse vast volumes of sensitive data, such as telephone records, identity documents, banking information or geolocation data and included data relating to individuals not suspected of any crime. They also included a shadow system known as the Pressure Cooker, used for analysing open-source information on the internet, that lacked proper controls.
Despite several years of monitoring by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), some major flaws remained unaddressed in 2026.
Call for Parliamentary oversight
Özlem Alev Demirel, German MEP for the Left group, issued a statement calling for plans to expand Europol’s mandate to be put on hold.
“This latest data protection scandal violates every legal standard, disregards the fundamental rights of those affected and renders oversight mechanisms absurd,” she wrote.
German MEP Brigit Sippel told this investigation that the fact that the data of innocent people was stored and analysed without any traceable record of who accessed it or altered the entries undermined confidence in the reliability of evidence and the rule of law.
“Before we begin discussing a potential expansion of Europol’s mandate, there needs to be genuine Parliamentary oversight, independent supervision with real powers of intervention, and full disclosure and transparency regarding matters that have remained hidden until now,” she added.
Home Office urged to answer questions
In the UK, conservative MP David Davis called in a post on X (formerly Twitter) for the Home Office to answer questions about Europol’s storage of data on British citizens.
“The Home Office must now say whether any personal data of entirely innocent British citizens is being stored in Europol’s systems and, if so, why it is being stored and why the UK government is allowing it to be stored,” he added.
Confidence in evidence may be affected
Speaking at a meeting of the European Parliament’s committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (Libe) on Thursday, MEP Birgit Sippel said that revelations could undermine confidence in Europol.
“I think the mere fact that a European agency has operated a parallel data system without any control raises concern, not only regarding data protection, but also on the way of working of agencies, and could affect even the confidence and reliability of agencies and the evidence,” she added.
EDPS Wojciech Wiewiórowski told the Libe meeting that this investigation raised new points and accusations that the EDPS would definitely be following. He confirmed that some of the EDPS enforcement decisions – such as its admonishment of Europol in 2020 and a decision requiring Europol to delete data in 2022 – were connected with the use of platforms identified in this investigation.
Wiewiórowski said that EDPS needed a wider range of sanctions to oversee European institutions. He added that he has the ability to issue a soft response, in the form of an admonishment, and hard response, in the form of an order to stop processing data, which “might be really dangerous for security in Europe”, but nothing in between.
With discussions underway about enlarging the mandate of Europol, he suggested that it would be a mistake for Europol to be enlarged without increasing oversight.
Saskia Bricmont, Belgian Green MEP, added in a statement that she would prioritise a discussion with the European Commission and the Libe Committee over the findings of this investigation.
“It is urgent that the agency and the European Commission provide detailed explanations,” she said. “Yet, once again, it is thanks to the work of investigative journalists that we are discovering a problem within Europol, which only serves to heighten mistrust.”
