Procedure and conditions for access to EES data by Europol
Article 33
1. Europol shall have access to consult the EES where all the following conditions are met: (a) the consultation is necessary to support and strengthen action by Member States in preventing, detecting or investigating terrorist offences or other serious criminal offences falling under Europol’s mandate; (b) the consultation is necessary and proportionate in a specific case; (c) evidence or reasonable grounds exist to consider that the consultation of the EES data will contribute to the prevention, detection or investigation of any of the criminal offences in question, in particular where there is a substantiated suspicion that the suspect, perpetrator or victim of a terrorist offence or other serious criminal offence falls under a category covered by this Regulation. 2. Access to the EES as a tool for the purpose of identifying an unknown suspect, perpetrator or suspected victim of a terrorist offence or other serious criminal offence shall be allowed where the conditions listed in paragraph 1 are met and the consultation, as a matter of priority, of the data stored in the databases that are technically and legally accessible by Europol has not made it possible to identify the person in question. A request for consultation of the VIS on the same data subject may be submitted in parallel to a request for consultation of the EES in accordance with the conditions laid down in Decision 2008/633/JHA. 3. The conditions laid down in Article 32(3), (4) and (5) shall apply accordingly. 4. The Europol designated authority may submit a reasoned electronic request for the consultation of all EES data or a specific set of EES data to the Europol central access point referred to in Article 30(2). Upon receipt of a request for access, the Europol central access point shall verify whether the conditions for access set out in paragraphs 1 and 2 of this Article are fulfilled. If all conditions for access are fulfilled, the duly authorised staff of the Europol central access point shall process the requests. The EES data accessed shall be transmitted to the Europol designated authority in such a way that the security of the data is not compromised. 5. Europol shall only process information obtained from a consultation of EES data subject to the authorisation of the Member State of origin. That authorisation shall be obtained via the Europol national unit of that Member State.