Brussels, 31/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - In Luxembourg on Friday 27 October, the home affairs ministers of the member states of the European Union welcomed the thoughts of the European Commission on setting in place a tool to track the funding of terrorism, the TFTS programme (terrorist finance tracking system), inspired by the current TFTP/SWIFT agreement between the EU and the United States. According to one source, consensus was reached on the need for a tool of this kind for the EU, which currently simply transmits information on financial movements (bank transactions, etc) of European nationals to the United States, which then analyses it as part of the fight against terrorism, alerting the member states of the EU if necessary.
This call for a specifically European system, in which data would be extracted and analysed on European territory, was made by the European Parliament when the latter was called upon to give its approval to the EU-United States programme, then relayed by the Council.
On 13 July of this year, the Commission therefore took action, proposing three possible structures, between a purely centralised system in the hands of European agencies such as Europol, a system managed by the member states alone, or a system somewhere between the two stools. On Thursday, the ministers welcomed this communication, which is set to lead to legislative proposals in 2012. However, they wanted the Commission to go into slightly more detail and draft a detailed assessment of the costs and technical mechanisms this TFTS would imply, one source told us.
Although the member states have said that they are open to setting a system of this kind in place, a number of questions need to be tackled in greater depth, such as the actual added value of the programme and how the European system would interact with the existing agreement with the United States. Other countries, such as Sweden, also asked for alternative mechanisms to be examined, the source continued. (SP/transl.fl)