Report Summary
This report provides members of the Scottish Police Authority with an overview of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation (TCA) Implementation post Brexit.
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Meeting
The publication discussed was referenced in the meeting below
Meeting of the Scottish Police Authority - 24 August 2023
Date : 24 August 2023
Location : COSLA, Edinburgh
Background
BACKGROUND
On 23 June 2016 the UK held a referendum on its membership of the European Union; whether to remain a part of the EU or whether to leave. The UK voted 52%-48%, to leave the EU.
UK Policing and stakeholders within law enforcement raised concerns over any losses to cooperation with EU and recommended that we be allowed to remain part of Europol, to utilise the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), to have access to the Schengen Information System Second Generation (SIS II) and be able to be a participant in Joint Investigation Teams (JIT) as this was deemed to be key to the success of investigations both within Scotland and UK.
The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020 with no agreement in place however negotiations throughout that year resulted in The Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) being agreed in December 2020. The TCA is separated into seven parts, with Part 3 covering law enforcement and judicial cooperation in criminal matters (LEJCC).
The TCA provided a legal basis for ad-hoc information sharing between law enforcement partners in EU Law, seeking to ensure urgent information sharing is less likely to fall foul under EU or national data protection law.
Title XIII within Part Three sets out bespoke dispute settlement provisions for this area of cooperation, although some elements of Part Three are also excluded from the application of these provisions (Article 696).
Whilst there was a great deal of concern that there would be a catastrophic impact on Police Scotland’s ability to serve our communities, mitigation plans have been implemented such as the roll out of the International Law Enforcement Alerts Platform (I-LEAP) and the creation of the Joint International Crime Centre (JICC) which will explored further in this paper.
The shared assessment of UK Home Offices’ International Crime Coordination Board (ICCB) is that the LECJ arrangements under the TCA are, in general, working well in practice, and the undernoted paragraphs will outline the current position in relation to the key measures.
