Brussels, 28/07/2011 (Agence Europe) - EU counter-terrorism experts and Norwegian authorities were called to an extraordinary meeting on Thursday morning, in Brussels, by the Polish Presidency of the EU Council further to the Oslo and Utoya Island attacks. Discussion was on strengthening and improving the sharing of information between European police forces, and on working on the factors that trigger radical action and behaviour especially the psychological factors. Participants sought to take forward legislative matters still pending, such as the regulatory framework on the marketing of chemical fertilisers, which was the subject of a proposal at the end of 2010.
A meeting - which was to continue during the afternoon - began with a first analysis of events by the Norwegian representatives, the Presidency explained. This was followed by a discussion on how the EU could prevent this kind of attack.
Several instruments were discussed. Following the attacks, which left 76 dead, Europol (also at the meeting) had set an EU First Response Network in place aimed at linking Norway with the intelligence services and terrorist experts of 6 member states (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom). Created in 2007, the mechanism was inaugurated by EU home ministers. In September this year, the Commission will also initiate its network for radicalisation awareness which will link all civilian players involved on the ground (including schools, social services, etc), and allow the rise in extremist behaviour to be analysed.
As Tim Jones, the adviser to the EU counter-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, said, this is a difficult exercise. Jones believes that, although today one must seek to understand the psychological processes that lead to violent acts, this remains very difficult. The adviser also said that this kind of act remained difficult to prevent and that, if new legislative mechanisms are necessary today, especially via a swift agreement on the text controlling the marketing of chemical fertilisers, these would not necessarily have prevented the attacks if they had already been in force. There is no magic answer, Jones went on, also sounding a note of caution against the possibility that Anders Behring Breivik's action could be emulated, as there is a risk that certain individuals would seek to carry out the same attack.
During the meeting, experts sought to focus on the “lone wolf” phenomenon, on self-radicalised individuals without any obvious link to terrorist organisations - a phenomenon that one should keep a close eye on, they said.
On Thursday, the Polish Presidency and de Kerchove's adviser played down criticism addressed to the Europol agency regarding the possible under-assessment of the far-right terrorist threat in the EU, saying it was necessary to keep up the same vigilance on all other sources of terrorism. “This does not mean”, Tim Jones said, that “after this attack, the other kinds of threat disappear”. (S.P./transl.jl)