Riga, 29/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 29 January in Riga, EU secretaries for state drew up their roadmap for responding to the terrorist threat in the EU. They agreed on a raft of initiatives to send to the heads of state and government meeting in Brussels on 12 February.
Although none of the proposals introduce any real novelty, ministers did succeed in fine-tuning some of the demands, such as the European Commission work timetable. Ministers called on the Commission to speed up publication of the “internal security agenda”, which they want to have by “mid April at the latest” rather than in May (ministers want this agenda to be put into practice by the middle of this year).
In a joint statement published after the meeting, EU home secretaries also reiterated their demand to make systematic controls of European nationals at external borders compulsory, by proceeding, in this respect, to an amendment of the “Schengen border code”. Although this could possibly resemble a doubled edged sword because according to a warning by one European leader who believes it is, nonetheless, crucial, “an amendment could take at least two years”, even though it could spark a lot of anger at the European Parliament. This same source explained “the EP is completely opposed to it and the Commission thinks that an interpretation of the existing rules, without introducing legislation, is sufficient”. In their statement, ministers emphasise that this legislative amendment “is a necessary stage” and would allow for certain categories of European individuals to be systematically controlled. It is not, however, certain that this proposal for an amendment will be introduced. The French Home Secretary, Bernard Cazeneuve, appeared to suggest that he preferred an “interpretation” of the current Schengen border code rules, rather than a legislative initiative. France would not, however, be opposed to an amendment of this code if this were done with maximum consensus.
Progress in sight on PNR?
Another sensitive subject: ministers again called for the European PNR (the European airline passenger data file), which has been suspended since 2011, to be adopted “as soon as possible”, namely, in 2015, explained the French Minister. Ministers called for discussions with the European Parliament to resume. They sent a formal refusal to MEPs who called on the Commission, over the past few weeks, to send them an amended proposal. “There is no need for a new PNR text”, was the irritated response of one participant. Another source indicated that “none of the ministers asked for a new proposal. Everyone agrees on the fact that we need to make progress on the current text”. The ministers also appear rather confident about the result of the discussions at the EP, particularly following their meeting with Claude Moraes (S&D, United Kingdom), the president of the EP's Civil Liberties committee. One source said that “he appeared positive and gave us the feeling that things were shifting”. Ministers still want, however, the PNR project “to be in line with the Council position” adopted in 2012 and which included the possibility of member states that wanted to to include intra-European flights in the system.
On Thursday, ministers again gave their support to the idea of providing Europol with the capacity of flagging up websites containing radical content. They said they wanted to cooperate in this domain with the major companies on the Internet. The German minister, Thomas de Maizière, would like these big companies, like Google, to have a “code of conduct” and for them to be able to remove content deemed brutal, more swiftly. The Commission has promised to examine a framework for action but has not as yet moved forward on the idea of new legislation, for example, the dereferencing of “radical” websites. (SP)