Who is monitored ? |
Committee P provides external oversight of what the Organic Law of 18 July 1991 calls "police services" (also rendered in English as "police forces"). This is a very broad term.
More specifically, Committee P closely monitors:
Committee P's mission is to examine how police forces act on the decisions of the judicial authorities, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the administrative authorities (the Interior and Justice Ministers, provincial governors, district commissioners and mayors). Although Committee P has no monitoring powers over these police authorities themselves, its findings inevitably include some relating to the actions or omissions of these authorities.
As such, Committee P investigates the activities and methods of the police and inspection and security services; their internal regulations and directives; any documents regulating the conduct of their members (except the guidelines for detecting and prosecuting offences and the guidelines relating to the administrative police); the activities and methods of the General Inspectorate of the Federal and Local Police as well as the monitoring bodies that are specifically internal to the police forces or police corps.
In terms of the CUTA and the support services, the supervision provided jointly by Committees P and I relates to the duty of the support services to pass on to the CUTA any relevant information, the protection of citizens' statutory and constitutional rights and the coordination and effectiveness of the CUTA.
However, in their capacity as the data protection authority, Standing Committees P and I jointly monitor compliance with privacy legislation with regard to the processing of personal data undertaken by the CUTA and its processors as part of their duties as laid down in the Act of 10 July 2006 and under other specific legislation.
More specifically, Committee P closely monitors:
- all the constituent parts of the local police zones and the Federal Police, including their internal monitoring and inspection bodies and the General Inspectorate of the Federal and Local Police;
- entities forming part of authorities and bodies serving the public interest whose members hold the capacity of judicial police officer or agent;
- persons individually responsible for identifying and recording offences. Private rural wardens are one concrete example of this. Overall, it would be safe to say that this affects hundreds of police officials operating in sectors such as the economy, labour and employment, agriculture, public health, social security and public works.
- security services within public transport companies (SNCB/NMBS, STIB/MIVB, TEC, De Lijn) and the security officers who work there doing this job or performing these duties (Article 212 of the Act of 2 October 2017 regulating private and personal security); and
- the Coordination Unit for Threat Assessment (CUTA), which is responsible for evaluating the threat posed by terrorism and extremism, as well as the various services which are required to forward information to the CUTA (the so-called 'support services').
Committee P's mission is to examine how police forces act on the decisions of the judicial authorities, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the administrative authorities (the Interior and Justice Ministers, provincial governors, district commissioners and mayors). Although Committee P has no monitoring powers over these police authorities themselves, its findings inevitably include some relating to the actions or omissions of these authorities.
As such, Committee P investigates the activities and methods of the police and inspection and security services; their internal regulations and directives; any documents regulating the conduct of their members (except the guidelines for detecting and prosecuting offences and the guidelines relating to the administrative police); the activities and methods of the General Inspectorate of the Federal and Local Police as well as the monitoring bodies that are specifically internal to the police forces or police corps.
In terms of the CUTA and the support services, the supervision provided jointly by Committees P and I relates to the duty of the support services to pass on to the CUTA any relevant information, the protection of citizens' statutory and constitutional rights and the coordination and effectiveness of the CUTA.
However, in their capacity as the data protection authority, Standing Committees P and I jointly monitor compliance with privacy legislation with regard to the processing of personal data undertaken by the CUTA and its processors as part of their duties as laid down in the Act of 10 July 2006 and under other specific legislation.