EUROPOL

Europol (the name is a contraction of European Police Office) is the European Union's criminal intelligence agency. Europol became fully operational on July 1, 1999.

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The establishment of Europol was agreed to in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, officially known as the Treaty on European Union (TEU) that came into effect in November 1993. The agency started limited operations on January 3, 1994, as the Europol Drugs Unit (EDU). In 1998 the Europol Convention was ratified by all the member states and came into force in October.

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Europol allocates its resources (around 410 staff and 90 Europol Liaison Officers or ELOs) from its headquarters in The Hague. The size of Europol belies the fact that they are in constant liaison with hundreds of different law enforcement organisations, each with their own individual or group seconded to assist Europol's activities.

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Currently Europol covers cooperation in all 25 member states of the European Union, with Estonia the last of the ten new EU states to ratify the Europol Convention on July 1, 2005.

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Additionally, Bulgaria and Romania are already members of Europol, even though they are only set to join the EU in 2007. This also happened with some of the Central European countries which joined the EU in 2004; they became members of Europol in 2002 to make EU membership more gradual.

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Police: :This article is about law enforcement. For the band, see The Police. For the town in Poland, see Police, Poland....

July 1: July 1 is the 182nd day of the year (183rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 183 days remaining....

1999: :For the album by Prince, see 1999 (album)...