The Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files is the only body an individual can turn to directly to have data about them removed from INTERPOL’s channels. It is not the only route by which data can disappear — under Article 28(2) of its Statute nothing prevents the country that supplied the data from correcting or deleting it, or the General Secretariat from blocking, correcting or deleting data processed in the system. It is free, it is confidential, and since March 2026 it is reached only through an online portal. It is also narrower than most people expect: it rules on whether the processing of your data complies with INTERPOL’s rules, and on nothing else. This page sets out what the procedure actually involves, what the Commission can and cannot decide, and how material from the European Convention system strengthens a file.
What the Commission is
Article 36 of INTERPOL’s Constitution describes the Commission as an independent body which ensures that the processing of personal information by the Organization complies with the Organization’s own regulations, advises on projects involving personal data, and processes requests concerning the information held in INTERPOL’s files. It has seven members, appointed for a five-year term renewable once for three years, chosen for expertise in data protection, international police cooperation, international criminal law, human rights or senior judicial work. Its current Statute entered into force on 11 March 2017 and has since been amended, most recently by the General Assembly in 2025.
Requests from individuals are decided by the Requests Chamber. The Commission works on written submissions and documents only; it does not hold oral hearings other than in exceptional circumstances, and it does not meet applicants or their representatives as a matter of course.
At a glance
| CCF request | Key facts |
|---|---|
| Who may apply | Any person, or their authorised representative |
| How | Through the CCF online portal only, save in exceptional circumstances |
| Cost | No fee of any kind |
| Types of request | Access to data; correction; deletion; revision of an earlier decision |
| Decision deadline | Four months (access) or nine months (correction or deletion) from admissibility, extendable |
| Revision | Only on a newly discovered fact, within six months of discovering it |
| Outside its mandate | Assessing evidence, ruling on extradition, advising on visas, awarding damages against a State |
The online portal, and what changed in 2026
From 10:00 CET on 26 March 2026, all requests must be submitted through the dedicated CCF portal. Requests sent by email or post are no longer accepted unless the Commission finds exceptional circumstances justifying another channel under Rule 25(2) of its Operating Rules. Through the portal an applicant or representative can lodge a request, apply for revision of a decision, follow the status of the file, see the correspondence exchanged with the Commission and read the decision taken.
Only certain file types may be attached — pdf, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, csv, txt, rtf, html, jpg, jpeg, png and gif. Audio and video files are refused. Attachments must be legible and correctly oriented, which matters more than it sounds: an unreadable exhibit is an exhibit that cannot be weighed. The Commission may ask for further information or documents after the initial submission, and may seek clarification from you, from the source of the data or from the General Secretariat — but a file that arrives complete and legible is decided on its merits rather than on correspondence.
Admissibility comes first
Nothing is examined until the request is declared admissible under Rule 30 of the Operating Rules, and the decision deadlines run only from that date. A request falls at this stage where it lies outside the Commission’s powers, where it is essentially the same as a request already examined and raises no new fact justifying revision, or where it is clearly unreasonable. Applicants also have to identify themselves properly and show the representative’s authority to act.
This is one of the most common avoidable failures. A file that argues the criminal case was fabricated, without connecting that argument to a rule INTERPOL applies, invites a decision on compliance that reads your material as background noise.
How the request is processed
- The Commission asks the General Secretariat whether any data concerning you are processed in the INTERPOL Information System.
- For a deletion or correction request, it then examines whether the processing of that data complies with INTERPOL’s rules, on the information available to it.
- It may seek further information from you, from the source of the data — normally the National Central Bureau that asked for the notice — from the General Secretariat or from other entities, and may carry out open-source research of its own.
- Under Article 35 of the Statute, information connected with a request is accessible to the applicant and to the source of the data, and before disclosing it the Requests Chamber consults its owner — the applicant or the source, as the case may be. Disclosure can be restricted, among other reasons, to protect the confidentiality of an investigation. Under Article 33(1), once a request is admissible the General Secretariat is notified of it and given the information it contains; anything you expressly mark as confidential is withheld, which protects you but narrows what the Commission can use.
- The decision is sent to the General Secretariat for implementation and then, with reasons, to you and to the source of the data.
Your request is not recorded in the INTERPOL Information System, and the Commission’s files are confidential. Where data about you already exist, the fact that a request is under study may be noted in your file, but not its content.
Time limits that actually apply
Article 40 of the Statute gives the Requests Chamber four months to decide a request for access and nine months to decide a request for correction or deletion, in both cases from the date the request was declared admissible. The Chamber may extend a limit where the circumstances warrant it, provided the extension is reasonable, communicated to everyone concerned and explained in the decision.
Article 41 governs what follows. The written decision goes to the General Secretariat within one month of being made; the General Secretariat implements it within one month of receipt, unless it needs clarification, in which case the month runs from the clarification. Decisions on access are provided to the applicant within one month of adoption. In practice, counting from the day you lodge the file, a deletion request that is admitted without complications is a matter of months rather than weeks, and INTERPOL advises applicants to wait at least three months after the session that examined the request before enquiring about the outcome.
The arguments that belong in a deletion file
Everything turns on INTERPOL’s own rules. The arguments that fit are these:
- Article 3 of the Constitution. Intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character are strictly forbidden. The Commission applies a predominance test, weighing the political, military, religious or racial elements of the case against its ordinary-law character, and looks at the nature of the charges and underlying facts, the status of the person concerned, the identity of the source, positions expressed by other members or international entities, obligations under international law, and the general context.
- Article 2 of the Constitution. Cooperation is to be conducted in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is where evidence of ill-treatment, of proceedings in absentia without remedy, or of a justice system that cannot deliver a fair trial becomes relevant.
- Article 83 of the Rules on the Processing of Data. The offence must be a serious ordinary-law crime meeting the penalty threshold, and must not fall into the excluded categories — in particular private disputes and matters of an administrative nature dressed up as crime, which is not unusual in files arising from commercial conflicts.
- Article 84. The requesting bureau must have confirmed that extradition will be sought on arrest; where years pass and no extradition request ever follows a located person, that assurance is worth testing.
- Data quality. Accuracy, relevance and whether the data remain necessary for the purpose for which they were recorded.
Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights are among the strongest material available for the second and third of those arguments, because they are findings made by an independent court after adversarial proceedings against the very State that requested the notice. A line of judgments about treatment in detention or about the conduct of criminal proceedings in that country carries weight that a witness statement cannot.
What the Commission will not do
The limits are set out plainly in INTERPOL’s own materials, and they are the reason a CCF request is rarely a complete answer on its own. The Commission is not empowered to lead an investigation, to weigh evidence or to determine the merits of a case; in its own words, only the competent national or regional authorities may do so. It is not a substitute for the courts that decide on extradition, and it gives no assessment or opinion on extradition proceedings or their likely outcome. It does not act on national files or national procedures, does not assist with immigration or visa matters, and cannot tell you whether you may travel abroad without being arrested. It is not, in its own words, a human rights court.
One power is worth knowing about. Where the Requests Chamber identifies abusive, improper or bad-faith conduct by an applicant, a representative or the source of the data, Article 28(3) of the Statute allows it to take appropriate measures, including bringing reported acts of intimidation, coercion or reprisal to the attention of INTERPOL’s bodies. Reprisals against an applicant can be reported to the Commission, and are taken into account in the analysis of the request.
If the decision goes against you
There is no appeal in the ordinary sense. Article 42 of the Statute allows an application for revision only where it is based on the discovery of a fact that could have led the Requests Chamber to a different conclusion had it been known at the time, and the application must be made within six months of discovering that fact, through the portal, with a statement of the new fact and the reasons it would have mattered.
What remains is the Convention route, directed not at INTERPOL but at the State whose acts affected you: the arrest and detention that followed the notice, the extradition decision, or the continued circulation of data about you by that State’s authorities and the harm it causes to your private life. Those proceedings have their own conditions — domestic remedies must be exhausted first, and the application must reach Strasbourg within four months of the final domestic decision. Our guide to admissibility sets out the full list.
We are lawyers in INTERPOL-related cases. We have no affiliation with INTERPOL, which neither appoints nor accredits lawyers for or against individuals.
Preparing a request to the CCF?
Our Strasbourg practice prepares deletion files and the Convention proceedings that often run alongside them. Start with a free assessment of what your case can realistically achieve.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a lawyer to apply to the CCF?
No. Any person may apply on their own behalf, free of charge, and the Commission does not require representation. What a lawyer adds is the framing: a file that is argued under the rules the Commission applies, with documents that are admissible, legible and relevant, and without the material that invites a finding that the request falls outside the mandate.
Will the country that requested the notice learn about my request?
In part. Once the request is admissible, the General Secretariat is notified and may need to consult the National Central Bureau concerned in order to process it, and the reasoned decision is provided to the source of the data as well as to you. Information you specifically identify as confidential is not communicated, although withholding it may limit what the Commission is able to do with your file.
Can the CCF stop my extradition?
No. The Commission confines itself to whether the use of INTERPOL’s channels complies with the Organization’s rules, and expressly does not assess extradition procedures or their outcome. Urgent protection against removal comes from the national courts and, where there is a real risk of irreversible harm, from a request for an interim measure under Rule 39.
How much does a request to the CCF cost?
The Commission collects no fee for processing requests for access to, or challenges to, information in INTERPOL’s files. Any cost is the cost of preparing the file — translations, certified copies of judgments, and legal work.
Does the Commission publish its decisions?
Not as a matter of course, and never with personal information. It publishes an annual report and may publish anonymised extracts of decisions that help the public understand how it assesses INTERPOL’s rules. Those extracts are the closest thing to case law in this procedure and are worth reading before a file is drafted.