Europol

As the EU’s law enforcement agency, Europol has a mission to support its Member States in preventing and combatting all forms of serious international organised crime and terrorism. Europol’s vision is to contribute to a safer Europe by providing a unique and evolving set of operational products and services to support law-enforcement authorities in all Member States. Europol's Strategy for 2016 to 2020 is the frame of reference for its daily operations and for supporting EU law enforcement cooperation.

In pursuit of this ambitious strategy, Europol is addressing the most important challenges facing it, and is exploiting all opportunities to make further progress and deliver tangible benefits.

Europol set up the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) in 2013 in The Hague to strengthen the law enforcement response to cybercrime in the EU and thus to help protect European citizens, businesses and governments from online crime. Cybercrime costs EU Member States EUR 265 billion a year. For the global economy, that figure is around EUR 900 billion. And that’s just the financial side.

Cybercrime is actually a wide and varied problem. And the EC3 is a key part of Europol’s, and the EU’s, response. The EC3 takes a three-pronged approach to the fight against cybercrime: forensics, strategy and operations.