Brussels, 11/02/2010 (Agence Europe) - The fight against terrorism remains very much a current issue for the European Parliament. On Wednesday, the Parliament was able to question both the Council and the Commission on problems involving body scanners (EUROPE 10075) and on the way the intelligence services operated antiterrorist strategies.
During a presentation of the European Commission's position on this point, the institution's vice president, Cecilia Malmström, pointed out that responsibility for intelligence matters was ultimately the responsibility of member states. Nonetheless, she announced that everything would be subject to an evaluation in this area: she said that they needed to know what they had available in this domain, what effects were being produced and what was lacking, so that they could propose more efficient measures. She said that she was aware of the fact that the terrorist threat had not diminished and in this connection cited figures from Europol: in 2008 member states reported 515 terrorist attacks carried out or thwarted, of which a large percentage were planned by Al Qaida and ETA. The anti-terror strategy adopted after the London and Madrid attacks still takes into account respect for fundamental rights, which is “ both a requirement and a necessity” if Union policies are to remain credible. Malmström confirmed that terrorism is a global phenomenon and that they had to cooperate with allies and international organisations. Tasks within the Union include the fight against radicalisation, the protection of infrastructure, victim support, improving threat detection methods and identifying sources of funding for terrorism. The European Arrest Warrant is one element in this strategy, as well as the fight against abusive use of the internet for terrorist aims. Improvements are required: the Commission will introduce proposals on explosive devices and, in a more general context, improve exchanges on best practices, as well as get to grips with all elements contained in the Stockholm programme. Reding and Malmström will jointly collaborate on a data protection programme, as part of the internal security strategy, a programme that the vice president hopes to present to the Parliament soon.
All this is very well and good, but what counts is cooperation between the different services involved when using this data, explained Manfred Weber (EPP, Germany), who is rather disappointed by the results from the Toledo meeting. Speaking on behalf of the S&D Group, Saïd El Khadraoui from Belgium, appealed for a global security approach and said that they should not have too many hopes with regard to body scanners. Gésine Meissner, (ALDE, Germany) said that the scanners were not a panacea and asked what would be the costs of this new technology and who was going to pay for them. Total security does not exist, pointed out a member of the Dutch Greens Judith Sargentini and Rui Tavares (GUE/Nordic Left, Portugal) who shared her scepticism about the infallibility of this technique. This opinion was not shared by Peter van Dalen (ECR, the Netherlands) who affirmed that scanners emitted lower frequency emissions than mobile telephones and said that they should use them. Faced with terrorism, they needed to be prepared, explained Teresa Jiménez (EPP, Spain), who explained to those who are always insisting on human rights, “the greatest freedom of all is that of life, let's defend it”. Carlos Coelho (EPP, Portugal), wanted to know if these scanners could work correctly when certain countries wanted to make them obligatory, whilst others gave passengers the freedom to accept or refuse them, as is the case under more traditional inspection systems. Philip Bradbourn (ECR, United Kingdom) mentioned the case of profiling passengers but regretted that a more efficient profiling system was needed.
Other MEPs focused their appeals on improving how the traditional intelligence services worked. Information must be available explained Charles Goerens (ALDE, Luxembourg) who insisted that nothing at all suggested that this was the case and called for respect for the reciprocity principle of intelligence exchange. He also made a robust appeal for the setting up of a Parliamentary control committee on these questions at the European Parliament. Sarah Ludford (ALDE, United Kingdom) said that intelligence services must be “responsible” for their action. She criticised British services for having been involved in torture cases and asked for those responsible to be brought to justice and, if necessary, punished. Without the highest level of cooperation between the intelligence systems, the fight against terrorism cannot be efficient, explained Carlo Fidanza (EPP, Italy). Diane Dodds (NI, Ireland) referred to the role of the intelligence services in the fight against terrorism in her country and called on all member states to give these services the resources they required. (L.G./transl.fl)