© Jeannot Ries / RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg
All Benelux countries—along with Luxembourg's ministerial representatives—signed the treaty Monday morning in Brussels agreeing to increase cross-border police cooperation, including by increasing information-sharing and allowing hot-pursuit police chases.
The treaty will make police officers' lives easier in a lot of ways, but especially when it comes to the exchange of information and cross-border car chases. Information about blacklisted number plates will be shared between the three countries, in order to be able to catch criminals faster.
© Domingos Oliveira/RTL Luxembourg
Luxembourg's police and defence minister Etienne Schneider said this morning that the Benelux countries would now be able to work together as one big territory. Police officers will now have be able to pursue fleeing vehicles across the border into Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands and will be able to access each other's databases for important information.
Police investigators will be able to forgo the time-consuming process of making an official request for information to foreign judicial authorities, Luxembourg's minister for justice Félix Braz stated. If a Belgian officer wants to carry out part of his or her investigation in Luxembourg, the Belgian officer will now only have to be accompanied by a Luxembourg police officer.
In addition to those changes, special units will be able to work with each other more closely in the future. In order to make this cooperation easier, police officer training courses will be coordinated across all three countries.
Schneider believes that the treaty sends an important message to the rest of the EU. The treaty is also open to other EU countries that might wish to join.
