1. Europol shall designate one of its operating units as the ‘Europol designated authority’ and shall authorise it to request access to the EES through the Europol central access point referred to in paragraph 2 in order to support and strengthen action by Member States in preventing, detecting and investigating terrorist offences or other serious criminal offences.
2. Europol shall designate a specialised unit with duly empowered Europol officials as the Europol central access point. The Europol central access point shall verify that the conditions to request access to the EES laid down in Article 33 are fulfilled.
The Europol central access point shall act independently when performing its tasks under this Regulation and shall not receive instructions from the Europol designated authority as regards the outcome of the verification.