Regulation (EU) 2021/1149 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 July 2021 establishing the Internal Security Fund

THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and in particular Articles 82(1), 84 and 87(2) thereof,

Having regard to the proposal from the European Commission,

After transmission of the draft legislative act to the national parliaments,

Having regard to the opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee (1),

After consulting the Committee of the Regions,

Acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure (2),

Whereas:

(1) While national security remains solely a competence of the Member States, protecting it requires cooperation and coordination at Union level. The Union’s objective of ensuring a high level of security within an area of freedom, security and justice pursuant to Article 67(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) should be achieved, inter alia, through measures to prevent and combat crime as well as through measures for coordination and cooperation between law enforcement authorities and other national authorities of the Member States, including coordination and cooperation with relevant Union agencies and other relevant Union bodies, and with relevant third countries and international organisations as well as with the help of the private sector and civil society.

(2) For the period from 2015 to 2020, the Commission, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament defined common priorities as set out in the European Agenda on Security of April 2015, which were reaffirmed by the Council in the renewed Internal Security Strategy of June 2015 and by the European Parliament in its Resolution of July 2015, namely preventing and combating terrorism and radicalisation, serious and organised crime and cybercrime. Those common priorities have been reaffirmed for the period from 2020 to 2025 in the Communication of 24 July 2020 from the Commission to the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions entitled ‘the EU Security Union Strategy’.

(3) In the Rome Declaration signed on 25 March 2017, the leaders of 27 Member States, the European Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission affirmed their commitment to working towards a safe and secure Europe and to building a Union where all citizens feel safe and can move freely, where the external borders are secured, with an efficient, responsible and sustainable migration policy, respecting international norms, as well as a Europe determined to fight terrorism and organised crime.

(4) The European Council of 15 December 2016 called for continued delivery on the interoperability of information systems and databases. The European Council of 23 June 2017 underlined the need to improve the interoperability between databases, and, on 12 December 2017, the Commission put forward a proposal for a Regulation on establishing a framework for interoperability between EU information systems (police and judicial cooperation, asylum and migration).

(5) To preserve the Schengen acquis and to contribute to ensuring a high level of security in the Union, Member States have, since 6 April 2017, been obliged to carry out systematic checks against relevant databases on Union citizens who cross the Union’s external borders. Furthermore, the Commission issued a recommendation to Member States on making better use of police checks and cross-border cooperation. Solidarity among Member States, clarity about the division of tasks, respect for fundamental rights and freedoms and for the rule of law, close attention to the global perspective and the necessary consistency with the external dimension of security should be key principles guiding Union and Member State action towards the development of an effective and genuine security union.

(6) To achieve this objective, action should be taken at Union level to protect people, public spaces and critical infrastructure from increasingly transnational threats and to support the work carried out by Member States’ competent authorities. Terrorism, serious and organised crime, itinerant crime, drug and arms trafficking, corruption, money laundering, cybercrime, sexual exploitation, including the sexual exploitation of children, hybrid threats, as well as chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, and trafficking in human beings, inter alia, continue to challenge the internal security of the Union. Internal security is a shared endeavour to which the Union institutions, relevant Union agencies and Member States should jointly contribute.

(7) To contribute to the development and implementation of an effective and genuine security union aimed at ensuring a high level of internal security throughout the Union, an Internal Security Fund (‘the Fund’) should be set up and managed in order to provide Member States with adequate Union financial support.

(8) Funding from the Union budget should concentrate on actions for which Union intervention can bring greater added value compared with action by Member States alone. In line with Article 84 and Article 87(2) TFEU, the Fund should support measures to promote and support the action of Member States in the field of crime prevention, the joint training of staff and police cooperation, as well as judicial cooperation in criminal matters involving Member States’ competent authorities and Union agencies, especially as regards the exchange of information, increased operational cooperation and support for necessary efforts to strengthen capabilities to prevent and combat terrorism and serious and organised crime. The Fund should also support training of relevant staff and experts, in line with the general principles of the European Law Enforcement Training Scheme (LETS). The Fund should not support operating costs and activities related to the essential functions of the Member States concerning the maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal and national security as referred to in Article 72 TFEU.

(9) The Fund should be implemented in full compliance with the values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the rights and principles enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the ‘Charter’) and the Union’s international obligations as regards human rights. In particular, the Fund should be implemented in full respect of fundamental rights such as the right to human dignity, the right to life, the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the right to protection of personal data, the rights of the child and the right to an effective remedy, as well as in full respect of the principle of non-discrimination.

(10) In line with Article 3 TEU, the Fund should support activities which ensure that children are protected against violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. The Fund should also support safeguards and assistance for child witnesses and victims, in particular those who are unaccompanied or otherwise in need of guardianship.

(11) In line with the shared priorities identified at Union level to ensure a high level of security in the Union, the Fund should support actions aimed at addressing the main security threats and, in particular, at preventing and combating terrorism and radicalisation, serious and organised crime, and cybercrime, as well as assisting and protecting victims of crime. The Fund should ensure that the Union and the Member States are also well equipped to address evolving and emerging threats, such as trafficking, including via online channels, hybrid threats and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, in order to establish a genuine security union. This should be pursued through financial assistance to support better information exchange, increase operational cooperation and improve national and collective capabilities.

(12) The financial assistance provided through the Fund should in particular support exchanges of information, police cooperation, judicial cooperation in criminal matters, and prevention in the fields of serious and organised crime, illicit arms trafficking, corruption, money laundering, drug trafficking, environmental crime, terrorism, trafficking in human beings, the exploitation of refugees and irregular migrants, severe labour exploitation, sexual exploitation and abuse, including the sexual exploitation and abuse of children and women, the distribution of child abuse images and child pornography, and cybercrime. The Fund should also support the protection of people, public spaces and critical infrastructure against security-related incidents and should support the preparedness for and effective management of security-related risks and crises, including through joint training, the development of common policies, such as strategies, policy cycles, programmes and action plans, as well as legislation and practical cooperation.

(13) The Fund should provide financial support to address the emerging challenges posed by the significant increase in recent years in the scale of certain types of crime being committed via the internet, such as payment fraud, child sexual exploitation and trafficking in weapons.

(14) The Fund should build on the results and investments of its predecessors: the Prevention of and Fight Against Crime (ISEC) programme, the Prevention, Preparedness and Consequence Management of Terrorism and other Security-related risks (CIPS) programme for the period 2007-2013, and the instrument for police cooperation, preventing and combating crime, and crisis management as part of the Internal Security Fund for the period 2014-2020, established by Regulation (EU) No 513/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council (3). The scope of the Fund should also allow for new developments to be taken into account.

(15) There is a need to maximise the impact of Union funding by mobilising, pooling and leveraging public and private financial resources. The Fund should promote and encourage the active and meaningful involvement of civil society, including non-governmental organisations, as well as the European industrial sector, in the development and implementation of security policy, where relevant with the involvement of other relevant actors, Union bodies, Union agencies and international organisations in relation to the objective of the Fund. However, it should be ensured that support from the Fund is not used to delegate statutory or public tasks to private actors.

(16) The cross-border nature of terrorism and serious and organised crime requires a coordinated response and cooperation within and between Member States and with competent Union bodies, offices and agencies. All competent authorities of Member States, including specialised law-enforcement services, may hold information that is valuable for effectively fighting terrorism and serious and organised crime. To accelerate exchanges of information, and to improve the quality of the information that is shared, it is crucial to build mutual trust. New approaches to cooperation and exchanging information, including in relation to threat analysis, should be explored and examined, taking into account existing frameworks within and outside the Union framework, such as the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre (INTCEN), Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC), the European Counter Terrorism Coordinator and the Counter Terrorism Group. The Fund should support Member States’ competent authorities responsible for the prevention, detection and investigation of criminal offences, as referred to in Article 87 TFEU, insofar as their activities are covered by the scope of the Fund. All funded activities should fully respect the legal status of the different competent authorities and European structures and the required principles of information ownership.

(17) In order to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of decentralised agencies with competences in the areas of law enforcement cooperation and training, drugs and drug addiction monitoring, fundamental rights, justice matters and large-scale IT systems, the Commission should involve the relevant decentralised agencies in the work of the Committee for the Home Affairs Funds set up by Regulation (EU) 2021/1148 of the European Parliament and of the Council (4), especially at the beginning and mid-term of the programming period. Where appropriate, the Commission should also be able to involve the relevant decentralised agencies in monitoring and evaluation, in particular with a view to ensuring that the actions supported by the Fund comply with the relevant Union acquis and agreed Union priorities.

(18) Within the comprehensive framework of the Union’s drugs strategy, which advocates a balanced approach based on a simultaneous reduction in supply and demand, the financial assistance provided under the Fund should support actions aimed at preventing and combating trafficking in drugs through supply and demand reduction, in particular measures targeting the production, manufacture, extraction, sale, transport, importation or exportation of illegal drugs, as well as possession and purchase for the purpose of engaging in drug trafficking activities. The Fund should also cover the prevention aspects of drugs policy. To achieve further synergies and coherence in the area of drugs, those elements of the objectives that relate to drugs, which for the period 2014-2020 were covered by the Justice programme, should be incorporated into the Fund.

(19) In order to ensure that the Fund makes an effective contribution to a higher level of internal security throughout the Union, and thereby contributes to the development of a genuine security union, the Fund should be used in a way that provides the most Union added value to the actions of the Member States.

(20) The Fund should support investments in equipment, means of transport and facilities only where such investments have clear Union added value, and only to the extent that those investments are necessary to achieve the objectives of the Fund. For example, such investments could include investments in equipment needed for forensics, covert surveillance, explosives and drug detection and any other specialised purpose within the objectives of the Fund. The Fund should not finance investments of purely national relevance or investments that would be necessary for the everyday work of the competent authorities, such as uniforms, cars, buses, scooters, police stations, non-specialised training centres and office equipment.

(21) In the interests of solidarity within the Union, and in the spirit of shared responsibility for security in the Union, where weaknesses or risks are identified, in particular following a Schengen evaluation, the Member State concerned should adequately address those weaknesses by using resources under its programme to implement recommendations adopted pursuant to Council Regulation (EU) No 1053/2013 (5).

(22) To contribute to the achievement of the policy objective of the Fund, Member States should ensure that the priorities of their programmes address all the specific objectives of the Fund, that the priorities chosen are in accordance with the implementation measures set out in Annex II, and that the allocation of resources between objectives is proportionate to challenges and needs and ensures that the policy objective can be met.

(23) In keeping with the principle of efficiency, synergies and consistency should be sought with other Union funds, and overlap between actions should be avoided.

(24) In order to maximise the effective achievement of policy objectives, to exploit economies of scale and to avoid overlaps between actions, the Fund should be consistent with and complementary to other Union financial programmes in the field of security. In particular, synergies should be ensured with the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and the Integrated Border Management Fund, which consists of the Instrument for Financial Support for Border Management and Visa Policy established by Regulation (EU) 2021/1148, and the instrument for financial support for customs control equipment established by Regulation (EU) 2021/1077 of the European Parliament and of the Council (6), as well as with the other Cohesion Policy Funds covered by Regulation (EU) 2021/1060 of the European Parliament and of the Council (7), with the security research part of the Horizon Europe Programme established by Regulation (EU) 2021/695 of the European Parliament and of the Council (8), with the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme established by Regulation (EU) 2021/692 of the European Parliament and of the Council (9), with the Justice Programme established by Regulation (EU) 2021/693 of the European Parliament and of the Council (10), with the Digital Europe Programme established by Regulation (EU) 2021/694 of the European Parliament and of the Council (11) and with the InvestEU Programme established by Regulation (EU) 2021/523 of the European Parliament and of the Council (12). Synergies should be sought in particular in relation to security of infrastructure and public spaces, cybersecurity, the protection of victims and the prevention of radicalisation.

(25) In an effort to strengthen complementarities between the Fund and the Instrument for Financial Support for Border Management and Visa Policy, multipurpose equipment and ICT systems of which the primary use is in accordance with this Regulation should also be able to be used for achieving the objectives of the Instrument for Financial support for Border Management and Visa Policy.

(26) Measures supported through the Fund in and in relation to third countries should be implemented in synergy and coherence with and should complement other actions outside the Union that are supported through the Union instruments. In particular, in implementing such actions, full coherence should be sought with the principles and general objectives of the Union’s external action, its foreign policy and its development aid policy in relation to the country or region in question. As regards the external dimension of the Fund, the Fund should enhance cooperation with third countries in areas of relevance to the Union’s internal security. In that context, funding from a thematic facility should be used to support actions in or in relation to third countries, within the objectives of the Fund, in particular in order to contribute to combating and preventing crime, including drug trafficking and trafficking in human beings, and to contribute to combating cross-border criminal smuggling networks.

(27) When implementing the thematic facility, the Commission should ensure that the funding addresses the challenges and needs involved in meeting the objectives of the Fund.

(28) Funding from the Union budget should concentrate on actions for which Union intervention can bring added value as compared to actions by Member States alone. Security has an inherently cross-border dimension and therefore a strong, coordinated Union response is required. Financial support provided under this Regulation should contribute, in particular, to strengthening national and Union capabilities in the security area.